


More Than A Tragic End (Or, The Wells Jaha Project)

by wellsmonroe (authorisasauthordoes)



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Wells Jaha Lives, because he deserved better
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-04
Updated: 2016-09-16
Packaged: 2018-07-20 01:03:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 21,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7384837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/authorisasauthordoes/pseuds/wellsmonroe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One hundred delinquents. Two dead, ninety-eight alive. First son, first to dye.</p><p>Wells Jaha got to come to Earth. He was not the first to die, and he will not be the third.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Murphy's Law (Or, The One Where Wells Jaha Doesn't Die)

The first sense to come back to him is touch.

Not quite touch, but feeling. A sharp pain in his hand, an even deeper pain in his neck. The sensation is dull at first, but as he wakes it grows more pronounced. Dull turns to ache, ache turns to throbbing.

Next is smell. Something acidic, like alcohol. The scent of gasoline, faint but lingering. Then, somewhere just beyond where he is, the new but invigorating aroma of life. Trees, grasses, flowers. Earth.

Earth. The memory of Earth. Searching for supplies, burying bodies. Two dead, ninety-eight alive. _First son, first to dye._ Acid fog. The sound of people talking, the taste of blood in his mouth – metallic, unpleasant. Throbbing turns to searing. Clarke learning the truth. Clarke knowing the truth. His father floating hers, his father sending them to die. A knife at his throat, slashing through the air.

Earth. He got to go to Earth.

One hundred delinquents. Two dead, ninety-eight alive. _First son, first to dye._

Wells Jaha got to come to Earth. He was not the first to die, and he will not be the third.

\--

Gasping for breath, Wells opens his eyes to the familiar view of the drop ship ceiling above him. Despite the blur, he can recognize it. But it’s only a glimpse before pain overtakes him and he’s screwing his eyes shut again, groaning out a cry for help.

“Oh, God,” a soft voice says. “Clarke? Clarke! Monty, where’s Clarke?”

“She just left a few minutes ago with Finn. Why?”

Wells manages to open his eyes again, struggling to regain control over his breathing and desperately taking in his surroundings. Next to him, a dark-haired girl stares at him with wide eyes, a damp cloth in her hand. Through the pain, a name comes floating into his memory. _Octavia._

The girl they kept under the floor for sixteen years. Octavia Blake.

“Wells is waking up.” Immediately, there’s a clatter of metal hitting the floor and the curtain to the drop ship being pushed back.

Monty. Octavia. The drop ship. Wells grits his teeth, fighting through the pain to put these pieces back together in a way that makes sense. _A knife at his throat…_

As if on cue, his right side of his neck burns with pain again. He gulps down another cry for help and forces himself to stay calm, to remember. The knife, the attack, was all in the forest. But here he is, in the drop ship, delinquents at his aid.

They found him. Somebody found him.

_Move_ , he thinks, taking a deep breath. _Do something. Move._

Slowly, he grips the table with his left hand, trying to avoid whatever is causing the pain in his right. That’s an issue he can deal with later. He starts to sit up, but the sharp throb in his neck betrays him and he grimaces, catching Octavia’s attention.

“Hey, whoa, don’t do that,” she says uncertainly, gently pushing him back down. “Don’t move.”

“A knife,” Wells manages to croak out, momentarily surprised by the hoarse quality to his own voice. “Someone has a knife…”

“Who doesn’t? Don’t move, Monty went to get Clarke.”

“You’ll be amazed how many times they tell you not to move,” another voice says. Glancing behind Octavia, Wells’ eyes fall on Jasper Jordan. Pale, but alive, goggles intact and back on top of his messy dark hair. When he meets Wells’ eyes, he grins.

Wells blinks. “You survived?”

“Yeah. Well, thanks to you guys. Clarke’s a really good healer.” He pauses, before smiling again. “You’re going to survive too.”

The throbbing recedes, then comes back with a vengeance. Wells takes another calming breath, a technique he taught himself long ago to deal with pain. Medicine was scarce on the Ark, not something that was just handed out, even to the Chancellor’s son. So when he had headaches, got scrapes running with Clarke around the halls, broke his thumb in an unfortunate airlock door accident when he was 13, there wasn’t just medicine laying around to take the edge off. His dad used to tell him the best way to deal with discomfort was to imagine it didn’t exist, to put your focus on something else.

So that’s what he did. Even with a broken thumb, medicine didn’t fight through the pain. A splint, grit, and calming breaths did.

That’s what he’d do. Put his focus on something else.

“Anything from the Ark?” he asks hopefully.

Octavia exchanges a look with Jasper as she dampens the cloth. “No. Monty tried using the wristband, but—,”

“But it fried. Whatever. We’ll try again,” Jasper finishes. “If anyone can figure it out, it’s Monty. He’s like, the smartest person we’ve got down here.”

After a moment, Wells smirks. “Not a lot of competition.”

Jasper laughs, an infectious sound that makes Octavia giggle and Wells smile wider.

“Get out of my way,” Clarke commands, muffled from the outside as the curtain is thrown back, and then there she is. She stands in the glow from the sunlight for a moment, taking in the situation, before marching her way forward. “Wells.”

Another throb of pain. Wells grimaces, but quickly covers it with a smile. “Hey.”

Clarke comes to his side and takes the cloth from Octavia, smiling as she presses the cool compress to his forehead. “Hey. You look so much better than when they found you.” She moves the cloth to his cheek, dabbing the sweat from his face. “What can you remember?”

“Depends. How far back do you want me to think?”

Clarke settles down in the chair next to the makeshift table. Jasper and Octavia exchange another wordless look before both moving out of the way, settling next to Monty and the broken wristbands. “Anything. Someone attacked you.”

“You don’t say.”

Clarke gives him a look. “It’s stupid. First we cut communication with the Ark, now we’re killing each other? How are we supposed to survive when we aren’t even smart enough to make use of the assets we already have?”

Wells attempts a shrug. “We were just saying this isn’t exactly the brain trust. And with Bellamy trying to take off all the wristbands…” he trails off as he focuses on Clarke’s arm. The metallic bracelet is no longer gracing her wrist. “Clarke, where’s yours?”

She blinks at him. “What?”

“Clarke, what happened to your wristband?” Silence. “Clarke.”

“We have bigger problems. Whoever attacked you might be planning to attack someone else.”

“It’s about your mom, isn’t it?” Clarke doesn’t acknowledge his question, but it’s her silence that gives her away. She looks away from him, taking the opportunity to dampen the cloth again. “Clarke, I know you’re pissed. That’s why I didn’t want to tell you. But you letting the Ark think you’re dead isn’t going to do us any favors. We agreed on that much.”

She still refuses to comment. Wells sighs, shaking his head, wincing when his neck aches sharply in response. “I shouldn’t have told you.”

“Hey,” Clarke says tersely, granting him eye contact once again. “I’m glad you did. I needed to know the truth, regardless of what I may have done afterwards.” The cloth returns to his forehead. “Besides, whose help do I need more right now? Her, I can work without. Down here, I don’t need her. You, I do.”

“Noted,” he says appreciatively, beginning to feel the relief of the cool compress. “But we do need them. Who knows how long we’re going to be able to survive down here without help. Especially if we’re being hunted by whoever’s out there.”

“And killed by each other.” She gives him a sympathetic look, before dropping her elbows against her knees, clasping her hands together.

Wells hesitates. He’s not entirely sure he wants to know the answer to this, but he asks anyway. “What happened to me?”

Clarke examines the wound on his neck. “It looks like someone tried to get you in the throat, one of the vital arteries. It’s so weird, I had just done that same thing to Atom when we found him in the woods. But it’s botched, they missed completely.” She glances at his hand, before locking eyes with him. “Whoever tried to kill you clearly doesn’t know what the hell they’re doing.”

“What a relief.”

“We’re going to figure out who did this to you. But to do that, I have to know anything you can tell me. Anything.”

Wells thinks hard on it, but nothing surfaces. It’s like the memories are locked, out of his reach, no matter how badly he attempts to resurface them. “There’s not a lot to tell. All I remember is… is seeing the sunrise. Someone was there with me. I can’t remember who. Then…”

“Clarke.” Finn steps into view, giving Wells a nod. “You’re looking good.”

He nods back stiffly. “Thanks.”

Clarke gives him an expectant look. “Do you have something for me or what?”

“Yeah. We found this at the place where Harper and Monroe found him.” Finn hands Clarke a small tool—a blade fashioned from the broken bits of the drop ship and sharpened to lethal standards. Wells gives an involuntary shudder.

Clarke glances at him before looking back to Finn. “Everyone is walking around with one of these right now. Thanks to Bellamy and his every-man-for-himself mentality.”

“I know,” Finn says, “but look at the side.”

Clarke turns the blade over in her fingers, squinting to read a small engraving scratched into the end of the knife. She blinks at it for a couple of seconds, thinking. Then, she locks eyes with Finn.

“J.M.”

Clarke looks to the drop ship door, before angrily getting to her feet. “John Murphy.”

“Murphy?” Jasper asks from the other side of the ship. “It was Murphy?”

Wells frowns. Something about that doesn’t feel right. Murphy’s creepy enough in person, he would have remembered him coming at him with a knife. “Clarke, I don’t think…”

“Wells, get some rest. I’ll be back in a little bit. Octavia, make sure he’s hydrated.”

“Okay.” Octavia gets to her feet. “But what are you going to do?”

Clarke shows the knife to Octavia. “I’m going to go show your brother what his loyal minions are doing. See how much he likes doing whatever the hell we want when someone could possibly turn around and stab him.”

“Very Julius Caesar,” Monty mutters.

Everything is happening so fast, Wells can hardly keep it all straight. But he knows it wasn’t Murphy. He would remember Murphy. “Clarke, wait!”

His protests are interrupted with a loud howl of pain as he brings his right hand down to grip the side of the table. He pulls back and screws his eyes shut, breathing heavily as Jasper and Octavia scramble to come to his aid.

“Watch your hand!”

“How bad does it hurt?”

It’s not the pain necessarily that’s the worst part, he realizes. It’s the unnatural feeling of it, the imbalance he felt when trying to grip the table. Something is off, and the thought of it is revolting. He’s afraid to open his eyes. Pain, you can pretend away. Out of sight, out of mind. But if he sees it…

Curiosity wins out. Wells is speechless as she stares at his own hand, his index and middle finger chopped off, now merely bandaged stumps.

_What do I do now, dad?_ Grit and deep breaths aren’t going to fix this one.

Gently, Octavia takes his hand and closes his remaining three fingers into a fist. She clasps it firmly between both of her own. “You’re going to survive.”

Jasper’s managing a smile, but the sight definitely made him a little uneasy. “Welcome to Earth, right?”

Earth. Wells gently stretches his hand out in front of him again, examining the damage as calmly as he can. Calculating, all things considered, as his father would. It’s not pretty. But it’s workable. Two fingers gone. Eight still intact.

Two dead. Ninety-eight alive. Including himself.


	2. Twilight's Last Gleaming (Or, The One With Wells Jaha's Father)

In the span of forty-eight hours, Wells Jaha feels like he missed a lot.

It’s Monty who finally helps him to his feet for the first time. He almost falls right back down again with all the blood rushing to his head, but Monty and Jasper are good support systems. Jasper runs to him and grabs his other hand to stabilize him the moment he begins to wobble.

“Whoa, easy there,” Jasper says, “You’re as wobbly on your feet as Monty was the time we drank those vials from the medical cabinet.”

“Vials?” Wells asks curiously, gritting his teeth. “What was in them?”

“Don’t know.”

Monty grins. “They were mystery vials.”

“Wouldn’t have mattered, really. Monty’s a lightweight.”

“Hey.”

To Wells, it makes perfect sense why the two of them stick so tightly to one another. Having that easy repertoire with someone, being able to have that ease, support, _knowing_ someone has your back when you’re about to fall over—a friendship like that is rare. When you find it, you don’t let it go.

It’s the type of friendship he and Clarke have. Or, used to have. He isn’t entirely sure where they stand at this point.

His relationship with Clarke isn’t the only thing he’s uncertain about. He hasn’t seen Murphy at camp since before the incident, and he can barely remember the last day. What he can remember is in bits and pieces. Nothing substantial. He hasn’t seen Murphy, or Finn, or Clarke. He doesn’t know if they ever found his attacker. He doesn’t even know if there are any camp chores that may need to be done in their absence.

Itching for answers, Wells spends a majority of the first evening he’s back on his feet moping around camp. Murphy, Finn, and Clarke still do not reappear.

It’s Bellamy who eventually approaches Wells. He finds him tucked back away in the drop ship, sorting through the limited medical supplies they have in an attempt to organize them. Wells notices his presence but doesn’t address him, waiting for him to say something.

Bellamy doesn’t, watching him methodically sort berries, cloths, scrap metal. Wells grows impatient and tosses him a disdainful look. “What?”

His tone seems to surprise Bellamy, snapping him out of his daze and bringing back his signature scowl to his face. “I’m surprised to see you’re up and moving. Wouldn’t Princess advise another day or two of rest before you start tidying up the place?”

“Well, Clarke can’t very well scold me when she’s not around, can she?” Wells snaps back, dropping a loose screw from the drop ship into a tin container with others. “Have you seen her?”

“No, not since last night.”

“Helpful,” he sighs, staring at the floor. He looks up to Bellamy, getting a good look at him for the first time since the stabbing. He still looks as much like a jerk as he did before. Wells knows, logistically, the smartest option would be to push aside his dislike for Bellamy—his arrogant attitude, his manipulation of the younger members of the delinquents, his brash, violent instincts—but it’s easier said than done. Besides, Clarke doesn’t like him either, and so long as the two of them agree on that and everything else, they can outnumber him and hopefully keep him under control.

Hopefully, but not surely.

“Where did you last see her?”

Bellamy’s brow furrows and some of the tension in his expression melts away, revealing a softer layer underneath. Wells raises an eyebrow, curious, waiting for Bellamy to explain. Once again, he’s reluctant to speak. “Bellamy.”

“She must not have told you about Murphy,” Bellamy mutters.

Wells blinks. “No, she didn’t tell me about Murphy. I haven’t seen her since yesterday. What about Murphy?”

“We tried to get him for the attack on you, considering it was his initials on the knife they found.”

“Yeah, him and his signature craftsmanship.”

“We confronted him but he was adamant that he didn’t do anything. But the knife spoke for itself. I tried to convict him, and a lot of people were pissed at him so it didn’t take a lot of effort to get others in on it. But it wasn’t him. It was someone else, and then everything just kind of went to shit.”

Wells gets to his feet slowly. “Tried to _convict_ him? What the hell does that mean?”

“That’s what you care about?” Bellamy says flatly, crossing his arms. “I just told you that John Murphy didn’t stab you, someone else did, and you care about my definition of conviction?”

“Just trying to get all the facts, but okay, we’ll come back to that.” Wells crosses his arms too, matching Bellamy’s stance. He’s thankful for the height he gained from his father—it gives him the slightest advantage in this war of power positions. “Who attacked me?”

“Charlotte.” Bellamy’s voice shifts when he says the name. Almost like he can’t quite recognize it when it leaves his lips. He blinks, before narrowing his eyes at Wells. “You remember her? Sound familiar?”

Wells shakes his head. “There are one hundred of us down here. I don’t know every last name.”

“She was younger. Maybe nine or ten.” Bellamy takes a deep breath. “The youngest one here, actually.”

Suddenly, the memory of that night comes rushing back to him, much clearer than before. He can not only picture the knife slashing through the air, but he can see the hand holding it. The small fingers. He can see the face of the little girl who sat next to him to watch the sunset, stabbing him and looking about as terrified as he did.

_“I’m sorry,”_ her voice rattles around in his skull. _I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry._

Bellamy tilts his head slightly at the blank expression on Wells’ face. “Sound right?”

After a beat, Wells nods. “Yeah. Yeah, it does.”

There’s a long silence. Wells wants to ask what happened to her, if she’s okay, if she was _convicted_ , but he isn’t sure he wants to know. If Bellamy was in charge of handing down sentences, it couldn’t have been pretty.

“What happened to her? And Murphy?”

“Murphy tried to kill her since we tried to ki—, um, convict him. But she disappeared on her own. We banished Murphy.”

“She just disappeared? Just off into the woods.”

There’s another long pause. Bellamy forces himself to meet Wells’ eyes. “Yes.”

The pain in Bellamy’s eyes conveys loud and clear that he’s lying.

\--

Another couple of hours without a word from Clarke.

Wells tries to process exactly what Bellamy told him. Now that he remembers Charlotte, remembers her face and her words to him, he can’t get them out of his head. The only relief he gets comes from the fact that Murphy is no longer in camp to terrorize everybody. But he’s still out there somewhere, roaming the forest “to die alone,” as Bellamy put it.

Wells sits at the fire by the drop ship with Monty and Jasper, glaring down at his misshapen hand. _The only way to make it end was to slay my demons._

His father, her demon. Even if he didn’t agree with all his father’s decisions, Wells never would have imagined him that way. Being chancellor, a leader in charge of thousands of people, how could he please everyone? They’re having enough trouble accommodating a hundred.

He can’t wrap his mind around the fact that to these delinquents, to these members of the Ark, his father is a demon worth slaying.

“Roma, don’t go.”

“What? He’s cute. Why shouldn’t I?”

“He’s also like, twenty-five. It’s icky.”

This thread of conversation nearby catches Wells’ attention. He looks up, focusing on a small group of girls across from him near the campfire. He knows one of them—Izzy, a frizzy-haired petite girl from his earth skills class. The other, the tall, regal girl standing and walking away, must be Roma. The other two girls are ones he’s seen here on the ground, maybe passed a couple times on the Ark but never spoken to: a tall blonde with flushed cheeks, some scrap cloth wrapped around her head like a makeshift headband, and a shorter, stern-faced redhead with her hair braided back from her face.

The argument continues until Roma laughs and struts away, heading towards the tent Wells knows to be Bellamy’s. He watches her enter the tent and when he turns back forward, he accidentally locks eyes with the redhead.

They stare at each other across the fire for an awkward moment, Wells too embarrassed to be caught eavesdropping to look away like any intelligent person would. The girl glares at him before her eyes flit down to his ruined hand. An instant later she looks away.

“Whoa!”

“Wow!”

A gaggle of shouts erupts amongst the delinquents. Wells looks up and searches the camp, looking for a danger or disturbance of some kind.

“A shooting star!”

This throws Wells off, but it’s Jasper who finally clues him in. He grabs his shoulder tightly and shakes him slightly, pointing towards the sky in awe.

“Wells, look!”

He lifts his gaze to the stars through the trees and finally catches a glimpse of what all the commotion is about—a bright, glittering star streaking it’s way across the sky. All around him, people are staring in amazement, chins tilted upwards.

“That’s wild,” Monty murmurs softly, tilting his head towards Jasper and Wells. “I thought they were made up.”

“Make a wish!” the tall blonde shouts gleefully, smiling to the other delinquents before nudging the redhead playfully.

Something about the star doesn’t feel quite right, Wells realizes. When they read about them in class, it never described them lasting for so long… or seemingly moving closer ever so slightly…

Bellamy emerges from his tent half-naked, joining the crowd of teenagers ogling up at the night sky. Something about the way he’s watching the star make it’s trek across the tree line makes Wells think that maybe he’s right, and maybe there’s more to this “shooting star” than meets the eye. Bellamy certainly seems to think so.

Despite their obvious excitement, Bellamy forbids any of the delinquents to go after the falling debris. He demands that everyone wait until morning when it’s safer, and after a lot of rallying and shouting matches, most everybody gives up. Just like that initial day of landing on the ground, excitement comes and goes like candlelight in the wind—providing a small glimmer of hope and being extinguished far too simply. Minutes later, the camp is back to its humdrum late evening atmosphere.

That is, until Clarke comes tearing through the trees, Finn right on her heels.

Wells is up before Monty can offer to give him a helping hand, approaching the two of them and searching their faces for any sort of clue as to what’s going on.

Clarke lights up a bit when she sees Wells walking towards her, looking impressively better than before. “Wells! Did you see the—?”

“The shooting star that wasn’t a shooting star? Yeah, I did.”

“You realize what it was, don’t you?” she says breathlessly, already marching her way towards Bellamy’s tent as she speaks. Wells walks fast to keep up with her. “It was a delivery from the Ark. It had to be. Some sort of sign, or something.”

“Sure, maybe—,” Wells begins, but Clarke disappears into Bellamy’s tent before he can finish a coherent thought. He looks to Finn. “Where have you guys been?”

Finn shrugs. “Around. How has camp been?”

“Uneventful until tonight. Everyone was crazy about the faux-star. A bunch of people wanted to go see it when it crash landed but Bellamy wasn’t having any of it. He wanted to make everyone wait until morning when it was safer.”

“Really? Bellamy wanted people to be safer?”

“Supposedly.”

As if on cue, Clarke bursts from the tent, distress the most prominent feature on her face. “We have to go. Now.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Finn begins, starting after her as she makes a mad dash for the woods.

Wells jogs to catch up to her as well. “Wait, what is going on? Why?”

“Where exactly do you suggest we go?”

“What did Bellamy say?”

Clarke whips around to face them both, continuing to walk backwards. “Bellamy is gone. He already went after the ship. Which means he knows what is in there, and he wants it before any of us can get to it.”

Wells clenches his jaw. Sounds exactly like something Bellamy would do.

Finn looks back and forth between Clarke and Wells, at their tacit exchange, before verbalizing exactly what they’re thinking. “Then he won’t get it. Let’s get going.”

\--

By the time they find the pod, the sun has stretched into the sky and early morning is upon them. Clarke is the first one to get to it, wrenching the door open and peering inside. Wells moves forward after her while Finn watches from behind.

Well is amazed when Clarke steps back and another girl steps out from the pod, sporting a head injury but smiling wide as she breathes in her first taste of Earth. Wells can understand that—the feeling of breathing in fresh air, knowing what fresh air actually means, is unimaginable. Something you don’t realize you’re missing out on until you experience it, and then you stand there inhaling it again and wondering how on Earth you spent seventeen years breathing but not _really_ breathing. Living, but not _really_ living.

By the time Wells makes it to them the dark-haired, Latina girl is holding her arms out and lifting her face to the new sprinklings of rain that are just starting to fall upon them. He comes to stand next to Clarke, both of them wearing the same lighthearted grin.

“This is amazing,” the girl breathes, and when she turns to face them again Wells finally recognizes her.

“You’re a zero-g mechanic,” he blurts out. He can see her file on his father’s desk, hear his father explaining his decision over whether or not to let her become one due to her medical conditions. A final decision that Wells actually agreed with. “You’re—,”

“Raven?” Finn calls from the trees, freezing when he sees her.

The girl, Raven, breaks into an even wider grin. “Finn!” she screams, before taking off at a run towards him.

“Raven Reyes,” Wells notes aloud, “The youngest zero-g mechanic in fifty-two years. They sent us Raven Reyes,” he says with amusement, smiling at Clarke before his good mood falters at the look on her face. Following her sight line, he witnesses Raven and Finn’s tight embrace, their kiss. He’s clearly not the only one who knows Raven Reyes from the Ark.

He glances at Clarke again, putting the pieces together. Finn and Clarke’s overnight disappearance suddenly makes a lot of sense. He pauses, starts to reach for Clarke’s hand to comfort her. Tries to think of something to say. But he does neither. He’s not really sure what to do.

But it doesn’t matter anyway. Clarke is off and helping Raven with her head injury before Wells can even come up with something helpful to say.

Wells joins them, entering the conversation as Raven finishes gushing about all the help Abby Griffin gave her. Her eyes meet Wells’ and she falters, recognizing him. “Oh my God, you’re Wells Jaha, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, that’s me,” he says uncertainly.

“You’re alive. I can’t believe it. They thought you were dead. Well, they thought you were all dead.” She gives him a sympathetic look. “I’m so relieved your dad is alright.”

“What?” Wells says defensively, before realizing her comment about his father was a positive one. “Wait, what do you mean?”

She stares at him. “You don’t know? Chancellor Jaha was shot.”

The ground seems to fall out from beneath him. He’s as light-headed as Raven, reeling from a blow he only verbally received. “What?”

“Man, I didn’t realize you didn’t know. But, I guess you wouldn’t have known. It’s okay, though, he survived. And so did you guys.”

“And so did you,” Clarke says encouragingly to Raven. “But why did they send you down here?”

A shock goes through Raven, showing on her face. “Crap.” She looks urgently between Clarke, Finn, and Wells. “We need to get in touch with the Ark. Your mom sent me because she thought getting someone down here was our last chance. They’re planning a culling on the Ark.”

Clarke closes her eyes slowly, taking this in. Finn gives her a look before raising his eyebrows at Raven. “A culling?”

“The Ark is dying, like I said,” Clarke says as she opens her eyes. As she speaks, she looks to Raven to confirm her thoughts. “They’re planning to sacrifice people to save resources.”

“Mostly oxygen,” Raven fills in quickly, getting to her feet. “But if we can get in contact with them, we can stop it. They’ll know that the Earth is survivable and then they can start sending people here before the Ark gets bad.” She looks to Wells. “But we have to get my radio if want to contact your dad.”

Raven jogs back over to the pod, the others right on her heels. She leans forward into the door for a few moments before reemerging, frowning. “This can’t be happening.” Her frown intensifies as she turns her gaze to Finn. “It’s gone.”

Wells and Clarke exchange a look, their train of thought on the same track. Finn looks at them both, before making a face. “Bellamy?”

In unison, Wells and Clarke nod. “Bellamy.”

\-- 

They finally catch up to Bellamy a few miles from the drop ship grounds.

Clarke is on him first, yanking him around and shouting at him about what he’s done. Finn runs after her and pulls her back from doing something more dangerous, but Bellamy is completely in denial mode anyway.

Wells is having enough of a time keeping everybody calm as tensions rise over the location of Raven’s radio. Bellamy is a series of avoidant comments, Clarke is accusatory as ever, and Raven is trying to get whatever facts she can.

“Bellamy, where’s the radio?” Clarke finally snaps, using her most authoritative tone.

Raven narrows her eyes, thinking. “Wait, Bellamy Blake?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, princess.”

“Bellamy Blake. They’re looking everywhere for you,” Raven continues. Clarke and Wells look to her in confusion.

Bellamy gives Raven a fierce look. “Shut up.”

“Looking for him why?”

Raven gives Bellamy a nasty look. “He’s the one that shot Chancellor Jaha.”

It takes Wells an admittedly long time to process these words. The yelling continues for both Bellamy and Raven, but he has stopped paying attention, repeating that fact in his mind over and over again. _Bellamy Blake shot Chancellor Jaha._ Bellamy Blake, the rebellious troublemaker, constantly riling everyone up. The person Wells tried so hard to tolerate for the sake of the camp, for the sake of keeping things civil and efficient. _Bellamy Blake shot Chancellor Jaha._

Bellamy Blake shot his father.

“I should’ve killed you when I had the chance.”

“Well, I’m right here.”

A few protests come from Clarke as the situation escalates, but it’s Bellamy’s next words that bring Wells back into the action.

“Jaha deserved to die. You all know that.”

Wells had never been a violent person. It’s a lifestyle he learned from his father, and a lifestyle he preferred to follow. Violence was never the answer, always fuel rather than water to a fire. His father took that mindset into every decision he made on the Ark, and since he landed in that drop ship, Wells took it into every decision he made on the ground. Sure, he could defend himself, he knew how to put up a fight when he needed (Murphy made sure everyone knew that as often as possible, it seemed). But all things considered, Wells was not a violent person.

The moment those words left Bellamy’s mouth, Wells became someone else. Someone he didn’t recognize.

He charges forward and yanks Bellamy off of Raven, swinging him around and pushing him onto the ground. Bellamy immediately swerves to get back up but Wells has the upper hand, shoving him back down again and dropping down to pin him against the dirt. He lifts his hand to land a punch but Clarke stops him, grabbing his arm and holding his fist back.

Wells looks over his shoulder at Clarke, locking eyes with her. She gives him a knowing look.

The anger recedes somewhat. Clarke knows Wells, maybe even better than he knows himself. And this isn’t who he is.

He drops his fist but he doesn’t let Bellamy get back up. He keeps him pinned while Raven approaches again, squatting down next to him.

“He isn’t dead.”

Bellamy’s eyes widen. “What?”

“You’re a lousy shot,” Raven barks.

“My father isn’t dead,” Wells repeats right after, “And he’s going to come down to Earth, and then you’ll have to deal with what you’ve done.”

The horrified look on Bellamy’s face is only satisfying for a moment. Then, Clarke steps forward and holds up her hands, signaling calm from Raven and Wells.

“Bellamy, don't you see what this means? You're not a murderer. You always did what you had to do to protect your sister. That's who you are.” Wells isn’t quite sure he’s hearing her correctly, as assuring the guy who did indeed attempt to murder someone that they’re not a murderer seems out of place for her usual moral compass. “And you can do it again, by protecting 300 of your people.”

“Where’s the radio?” Finn finishes, exposing Clarke’s latest peacemaking tactic.

Bellamy shakes his head, taking the momentary lapse in anger to nudge Wells off of him. “It’s too late.”

Raven glares at him, before looking to Clarke. “Now what?”

Clarke paces away from them, before turning back. “We get back to camp and get others. We’ll search the whole damn forest if we have to. Maybe the radio is salvageable, whatever the hell he did to it. We don’t have a lot of time. But we have to try, at least while we’re coming up with a plan B.”

Raven, Finn, and Clarke are already off back towards the drop ship when Bellamy gets back to his feet. He throws a moody look in Wells direction before brushing himself off. “You’re hiding a lot more strength than you let on, huh, Chancellor-in-Training?”

Wells merely squints. “Murderer.”

Then, he follows the others and leaves Bellamy behind without looking back.

\--

All of the delinquents gather to watch the flares, including Bellamy.

Wells politely pushes his way through the crowd, smiling back at Jasper as he passes him before finally making it next to Clarke. He stands next to her and tucks his hands into his pockets, staring up at the night sky.

Clarke doesn’t look at him, but she speaks softly in a tone clearly intended for him to hear. “Think they’ll work?”

“They’ll work.” Wells doesn’t know what to think if he believes the alternative. After a long moment of gazing up at the flares shading the sky a brilliant red, he clears his throat. “Clarke?”

“Yeah?”

“You don’t really think that Bellamy is guilt-free because he didn’t succeed in killing my father, do you? I mean, you still think it was wrong, don’t you?”

Clarke examines him for a long moment, before directing her eyes back up to the stars. “I think we need to say and do whatever we need to survive.” Wells waits for her to elaborate, but she doesn’t. Instead, she glances forlornly over at Finn and Raven, who are standing all wrapped up in each other. Raven looks to them both and gives them a smile.

Heartache. Wells knows the expression. He lived with that expression for days straight in the time between Clarke’s father’s floating and her lock up in the delinquent prison cell. But he doesn’t know what to say for this kind of heartbreak. Losing family is one thing entirely, deeper, colder at its core. But love is something else, more shallow maybe, but a million times more complex. Wells doesn’t even know where to begin in trying to figure it out.

Bellamy makes his way next to Clarke and clears his throat. Instinctively, Wells turns away and starts to push back through the crowd, getting as far away as he can from the guy who shot his father. He wonders if his father knows how badly people think of him. How the delinquents think of him as a demon to slay—how people like Bellamy actually try.

_He kills my parents, and I see his face… and I wake up and I see yours._

He also can’t shake the feeling that people feel the same way about him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey everyone!! i just wanted to thank everyone who has read so far, it means the world to me to see your kudos and comments (and probably to Wells too, lets be real). just a couple of notes: this chapter says part 1, because the chapters technically go by episode but i want to keep each chapter on ao3 about 2000-3000 words (for your sake), so don't be surprised if a lot of episodes come in 2 parts! besides, it's more fun that way.  
> anyway, comment away, kudos away, read on!! can't wait to continue this journey with Wells and y'all :)


	3. His Sister's Keeper (Or, The One Where Wells Jaha Steps Up)

_“Wells,” his father says softly, shaking his shoulder. “Get up.”_

_Just another day on the Ark. He’s going to get up, tidy up, spend a minute and half brushing his teeth. His mother used to always press the importance of brushing his teeth. He’ll go to Earth Skills class, help Vera tend to the tree. Find Clarke after studies, maybe play some chess._

_He will probably help his father on particularly difficult decisions that day. That’s what he always does. How many of those deadly verdicts his father has made have really been on Wells’ conscience in some way? He’s always tried to give the best advice he could. He’s always tried to look at all the options, consider every angle, and listen to his moral compass as best he could. But he couldn’t always compromise logic and morals._

_“Wells, come on.” Another smack on the arm. “Get up!”_

Wells jumps awake, looking around at the drop ship around him and focusing on Finn in front of him. The drop ship. The ground.

Just another day on the ground.

“What? What’s going on?”

“Not sure. Bellamy’s yelling about something. You know how he and Clarke get so I wanted to get some backup.” Finn gives Wells a solid pat on the shoulder. “Hope that’s okay.”

Even if it wasn’t, Wells is wide awake now. He nods offhandedly, regaining his bearings on the situation as he gets to his feet. Another day on the ground, yes. But he’s already survived a good number of those. He can handle another.

Besides, it’s nice to feel needed. He wouldn’t say it to Finn outright, but the fact that he came to him when he decided backup may be necessary holds a certain weight in his chest that he can’t quite substitute with any other feeling. It’s the same swell he always got when his father would ask for his advice. Being useful. Having a purpose. That feeling of being an asset rather than just another speck floating through the expanse of space.

Finn and Wells exit his tent shared with Monty and Jasper to find many delinquents still milling about despite how late at night it feels. Wells took an earlier shift for sleep, but he still feels like he only got a few moments of actual rest.

They find Clarke and Bellamy over by the bonfire, and Wells can tell by the crease in Clarke’s brow that whatever they’re discussing might be of actual concern.

Finn stands right back at Clarke’s side as Wells awkwardly stands between her and Bellamy. He gives Clarke an inquisitive look. “What’s going on?”

She finally focuses on him, obviously lost in thought but relieved to have another logical presence in her midst. In some ways, Wells knows he and Clarke will always have that effect on one another—the calming feeling of recognizing an ally standing by your side. “We’re discussing sending out a search party. Bellamy’s worried—,”

“Octavia is missing,” Bellamy finishes gruffly, keeping it short and sweet.

Wells frowns. “Really? That’s so weird. I feel like I just saw her.” But, then, struggling to place her in camp in the last few hours proves tricky. Truthfully, the last he remembers really seeing her was when everyone was freaking out over Raven’s drop ship.

“You’ve seen her?” Bellamy snaps, burning Wells with his glare. “Where?”

He knows Bellamy is concerned. He knows this in his gut, that the reason Bellamy is lashing out is because his sister is the real reason he is even down here on the ground with them. He’s worried about his sister, and Wells should be able to appreciate that sole humane quality he possesses. But that fiery stare also reminds Wells that Bellamy is also on the ground with them because he was running away. Because he shot his father, and he’s going to get away with it.

Wells scowls. “Sorry, I misspoke. I guess the last time I saw her was yesterday.”

This earns a disdainful eye roll from Bellamy.

“We can organize a party to search for her,” Finn offers, mediating like usual.

“Whatever. I’m going, and I’m going now.”

“Don’t be stupid, Bellamy,” Clarke says flatly. “There’s no point in trying to search the woods in this light. You can gather a crew and leave in the morning.”

“And waste all that time? No way. I’m leaving now.”

“I mean, go ahead and go,” Raven says slyly, sliding up next to Wells and crossing her arms. “But you’ll be Grounder fodder the minute you step outside the camp. Really, it’s up to you.”

Surprisingly, Raven has a similar presence to Clarke next to him: reassuring, a definite ally, a logical mind. He’s probably jumping the gun considering he barely knows her, but having read her entire file, Wells feels like he knows everything about her.

Bellamy opens his mouth to argue, but nothing comes out. He’s cornered by strategists, and he knows it.

“But if you leave tomorrow, you won’t be the only one,” Raven continues. “If we want to have any hope of communicating with the Ark, I need to go and search that bunker. I can go alone, but—,”

“No, no one should be going alone anywhere,” Clarke says, putting her hands on her hips while she thinks. She looks over her shoulder at Finn next to her. “Can you gather a group and leave with Bellamy to find Octavia?”

He nods quickly. “Of course.”

“Good. Then Raven and I can search the bunker for the radio.”

It takes Wells a long moment to realize he has effectively been left out of the plans. “Hey, wait a minute. What am I supposed to do?”

Clarke blinks at him momentarily before replying. “Someone has to watch camp.”

“Clarke, seriously? I can take Raven to find parts to get in contact with the Ark.”

“No, I really should go. Finn and I are the only ones who have seen it, and he’s going with Bellamy.”

Bellamy, having had enough of this conversation, storms off to start recruiting a team. Raven joins Finn and they start a friendly conversation in low voices as Clarke begins to walk away, back into camp leader mode. Wells starts after her, taking her shoulder lightly.

“Clarke, what gives? Why are you benching me?”

She gives him a searching look, her eyes softening after a moment. “Camp watch is important, Wells. Someone has to keep order, and with Bellamy and me gone it’s an extremely necessary job. There’s no one I’d trust more than you to do it.”

The sentiment is genuine, but it still feels off to him. “Noted. But if we want to get the most out of all of our talents, you can’t keep me at home base all the time.”

She nods, clearly not entirely sold. Something about the look in her eyes gives Wells some sort of signal. The gleam is familiar, the same sort of look she gave me when he woke up in the drop ship with two fingers less than before.

“Look, I was attacked. It sucked. But we have to move past it.”

Clarke doesn’t quite meet his eyes. “I have to pack.”

She lightly squeezes his hand on her shoulder with one of her own, before dropping his hand and leaving him standing in the middle of camp.

\--

After a couple more hours of restless sleep, Wells is up early with the others to watch both parties leave.

Aside from Bellamy and Finn, they have also recruited Jasper, a tall guy, the redhead girl from the campfire, and her attractive friend whom Wells learns is named Roma. Raven and Clarke stand with them, no additional members joining their party.

As they’re gearing to leave, Wells approaches Jasper. He pats him the on the back, speaking quietly so that Bellamy and Finn can’t overhear. “Jasp, you sure you want to do this?”

Jasper doesn’t look at him, but he does glance over at Bellamy and Finn discussing the plan of action. It’s obvious from his expression how Jasper idolizes them both—Bellamy for his brute strength and force of nature, Finn for his ability to remain calm under fire and attractive personality. Finn, Wells can understand. It’s the thought of idolizing Bellamy that worries him.

Quite simply, he’s not sure Jasper is well enough for such an intense mission anyway. Not just physically, but he’s been jumpy and skittish even on the best of days. Wells is relatively sure Jasper has some form of PTSD after the spear attack, but no one seems to be paying any attention to stuff like that.

Wells finds himself wishing more often than not that Abby and Jackson were here to draw attention to it. Especially Jackson—he’s sort of Abby’s mental health guru and is much more adept at talking to young adults.

Jasper finally brings his gaze to meet Wells. He looks sure, but there’s a wild glint to his eyes that has been there since the Grounder attack. His smile is genuine enough. “I can handle it. Just uh, make sure Monty doesn’t worry too much?”

Wells nods, smiling back. “Will do.”

“Team, move out,” Bellamy demands, leading the way into the woods. Roma eagerly follows his orders, making the redhead roll her eyes as she follows suit. Clarke and Raven stand with Wells and watch the search party disappear into the trees.

Raven shrugs her backpack more firmly onto her shoulder. “And with that, we are off.” She starts walking, before turning around and taking a backwards pace, pointing to Wells. “Don’t let Monty give up tinkering with what we’ve got. It’s going to take both of us to put this crapshoot communicator together.”

Wells nods, exchanging smiles with Clarke as she follows after Raven’s stride. “May we meet again,” Clarke says casually, tossing around the usual good-bye phrase almost instinctually.

“May we meet again,” he says back, out of habit. But as Clarke turns around to catch up to Raven, moving just a few steps ahead of her, Wells realizes how suddenly the serious the words felt coming out of his mouth. They’ve always been a bit sober, considering they’re part of the Ark funeral prayer, but here on the ground they suddenly feel much heavier. Meeting again doesn’t feel so certain anymore. For all he knows, he and Clarke just said good-bye forever.

He shakes off this wave of hysteria, turning around and heading towards the drop ship.

Pulling back the curtain and ducking inside, he finds Monty in his usual spot. He has an orange blanket draped around his shoulders and is surrounded by broken pieces of wristbands and other assorted scrap metal. He squints as she tinkers with a couple of screws. By his feet are some of the wires of the drop ship, exposed but still sparking with energy. Wouldn’t want to sit on them, in any case.

Wells pulls up a crate across from him and settles down on it, sighing. “What’re you working on?”

Monty peers up at him and gives him a genial smile, clearly glad for the company. “Just the same stuff I’ve been messing with since the start. Lot of good it’s done, huh?” There’s a long pause. Monty focuses back on the useless wristband in front of him. “You see the funeral?”

“No, must’ve been asleep.”

“Three hundred and twenty coffins. Our flares obviously didn’t get the message across in time.”

The culling. Wells had completely forgotten about the funeral processes on the Ark—of course they’d send their bodies back to the ground. They’d know the culling happened whether they wanted to or not. “Hey, it’s Bellamy’s fault. He’ll have to live with it.”

“Maybe, but it’s my fault too. You know, if I had gotten this stupid thing to…” he trails off in frustration, shaking his head at it. “I keep thinking about my mom, you know? No way to know who got culled.”

That thought had never even occurred to Wells. There was never a chance of his father being culled, being the chancellor who calls the shots. The privilege he grew up with only continues to become more apparent the longer he spends on the ground.

“You’ve done more than any of us have done,” Wells shrugs, grinning encouragingly. “You and Raven are going to save us all with your intelligence. Which slim to none of us can do otherwise.”

“It’s funny, Clarke said basically the same thing earlier this week.” Monty gives up with one of the screws and tosses it further into the drop ship over Wells shoulder. “Cool how you guys basically share a brain. A true leadership duo.”

It’s flattering, and it gives Wells that swelling in his chest again. But part of it doesn’t feel quite true. He wishes he felt like a duo with Clarke as much as people seem to see them as one. “Talk about sharing brains, you and Jasper give us a run for our money.”

“Yeah,” Monty says distantly, tossing the other screw further into the drop ship. It almost nicks Wells on the ear as it flies past. “Sorry. Jasper has better aim than I do. He came up with the game last week while we were stuck in here with this crap all day.” A pause. “He left with Finn?”

Wells nods, watching as Monty attempts to hide the anxiety that streaks across his face. He nudges his foot against Monty playfully. “I wouldn’t sweat it. Finn is there to keep the peace, and Bellamy will probably just toss anybody that threatens them into the river with the radio.”

“Or just kill them,” Monty says with a chuckle.

Wells laughs. “Yeah, or that.”

\--

Minutes slip into hours and Wells and Monty keep up an easy rapport. Monty attempts to explain the mechanics of the tricks he’s trying with the bracelets but it’s all rocket science to Wells, so he just nods along. Although he feels a little bitter about having being kept out of the action, there is something nice about just hanging around camp. His stress levels actually dip.

For about five minutes.

Monty and Wells both jump when the curtain rips back and a figure appears in the light from outside. As they step further in Wells recognizes her as the other girl from the campfire with Roma, the blonde with the bandana. She has an unintimidating, round face, but the expression on it currently tells Wells he’s in big trouble.

She smacks her hands on her hips and frowns at him. “You’re Wells, right?”

He exchanges a look with Monty before nodding slowly. “Yeah. What’s up?”

“Clarke left you in charge. Right?” Before Wells can reply, she continues on. “Well, you’re not doing a very good job.”

“What?” Admittedly, Wells is a little stung by this accusation. “Why do you say that?”

“You’re not doing anything! Come outside and stop these idiots.”

Monty raises his eyebrows as Wells clambers to stand, following the girl to the entrance of the drop ship and stepping past the curtain.

She wasn’t kidding about idiots. A large group of delinquents has assembled by the unlit bonfire, two boys in the middle holding some of the large spears they fashioned to build the wall. They’re circling each other and playfully jabbing at each other, playing some stupid wood version of fencing. It looks sort of like the jousting sport Wells remembers from history books, only much stupider and no horses in sight.

“Someone is going to impale themselves,” she grumbles, watching the shenanigans with disdain.

“No kidding,” Wells admits, already jumping down from the drop ship door. “Hey, what’s your name?”

“Harper. Harper McIntyre.”

“Harper.” Something about the name is vaguely familiar. “Cool. Nice to meet you, Harper. Can you circle camp and make sure no one else is doing something similarly stupid? I’ll take care of this.”

She nods curtly, clearly happy with being given something to do. She hops off the other side of the door and heads around to the other end of camp. After watching her go, Wells turns and takes a deep breath, trying to gather all the impressive gusto he ever learned and gained from his father. Then, shoulders straight and standing tall, he storms into the midst of the crowd.

“Hey, drop them. Drop the spears!”

“Ha, Jaha’s son is taking charge,” someone jeers from the sea of faces.

“Spear him!”

Wells tosses a harsh glare over his shoulder. Somehow, he had expected the taunts to stop after Murphy’s tyrannical reign had ended. “Look, are you all trying to stake each other? Put ‘em down. Come on, down.”

The boy behind him, who Wells vaguely knows to be Sterling, drops his spear. But the guy in front of him is clearly more mischievous.

He jokingly jabs forward and almost scratches Wells in the chest, but Wells avoids the blow and grabs the front of the wood, yanking it and the boy forward. With another swift tug Wells pulls the spear from his hands and sends the guy falling face first onto the dirt.

“Whoops,” Wells says flatly, turning the spear back into its upright position.

The crowd slowly disperses, more than enough of them grumbling some unkind words about him. Wells turns to accept the other spear from Sterling. As he’s leaning them safely back up against the wall Harper rejoins him.

“Nothing else to report,” Harper says efficiently, crossing her arms and standing next to him, eyeing their fellow delinquents. Suddenly, it hits him why her name rings a bell.

“Harper. That’s right!”

“What?”

“You applied to be the next tree keeper. After Vera Kane.”

For some reason, this makes her blush. “Oh. Yeah, well, that was before lock up. Wouldn’t really matter much now.”

“My dad liked your application. He remembered you from our year as the nations in the Unity Day pageant. You were the speaker.”

She blushes even more. “Beat out Clarke for the position, yeah. But only because I practiced the speech like a million times with my dad.” She loses herself in a memory, before shaking herself out of it. “Whatever. Back to business.”

Wells smiles. He’s already growing fond of Harper’s determined attitude, despite her unassuming demeanor.

“What next?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like, what did Clarke tell you to do? Don’t we have any plans for the day? Gathering food? Organizing? Anything.”

Suddenly, Wells feels embarrassed. No, Clarke didn’t give him any instructions. For a person who proclaimed how important camp watch is, she didn’t seem to give it a lot of thought when she passed it off to him. “Nothing from her. I guess keep order, really, until she gets back.”

Harper wrinkles her nose. “That sounds sort of lame.”

Yeah, it definitely did.

“You don’t think they’ve been gone too long, do you?” Harper says after another moment.

“Who? Clarke?”

“No, she and Raven are at the bunkers so at least we know where they are. I was talking about Bellamy’s troops.”

Wells shrugs. “There’s no way to say, really. Bellamy will keep them out there until they get Octavia, but with no traces to follow that could be a while.” He examines her carefully. “You worried about Roma?”

Harper nods shortly, not meeting his eyes. “And Zoe. I told them not to go, because what kind of suicide mission is this, right? But Roma kept insisting, going on about Bellamy would take care of them, what was there to worry about, she wanted to explore anyway. And all that talk got Zoe all riled up into going too. I kept saying it was dangerous, and all Zoe would say to me is that she wasn’t afraid.” Harper shook her head. “‘I’m not afraid. I’m not afraid.’ Like, okay, great, but what if _I’m_ afraid _for_ you?”

“Zoe, is she the redhead?”

“With the braids? Yeah. Aren’t they epic? I’ve been trying to get her to braid my hair but obviously we’ve been a little busy. She did this one though, just for starters,” she says enthusiastically, pointing out the one braid along the front of her hair, tucked under the bandana.

“You known her a long time? You guys seem really close.”

Harper shakes her head. “Just met on the ground. Me, Roma, Izzy, and her. All from different stations. Isn’t that wild? There were so many people on the Ark, it was kind of like each station was it’s own little world. No idea who you were missing.”

What a thought. Wells’ best friend had always been Clarke, both from the same station, together since birth it felt like. He was only starting to realize just how many people he hadn’t met, and how little friendships he really had.

He opens his mouth to reply when they’re interrupted by a loud, long horn, blowing from somewhere in the distance. Both of them freeze, Harper watching Wells with wide eyes, until the horn sounds again.

“Acid fog,” Wells mutters, giving himself exactly five seconds to freak out before regaining his composure. Thinking clearly. Strategizing. “Harper, get everyone to the drop ship.”

“Acid fog? What does that mean?”

“That horn is a warning. Go get everyone from the east side back to the ship. Now.”

Without waiting for confirmation Wells pushes away from the wall and darts to the west side of camp, calling for everyone to head to the drop ship. Most of them don’t give him a second thought, until he mentions the acid fog and then suddenly everyone is more than happy to comply with his orders.

He doesn’t even have time to think about Clarke until he’s standing at the doors with Harper, getting the last delinquents safely inside.

“We have to close the doors,” Wells commands, finding the lever on the side of the door.

“What?” Harper snaps, coming up to his side and staring at him. “But Zoe and Roma are still out there. And Clarke. What if they come back and we’ve locked them out?”

“If they’re out when that fog is rolling in they’re dead anyway. And if we don’t do this, we’ll be too.” He looks to Harper, locking eyes with her. “Harper, I need you to trust me here. I need you to support me and help keep everyone else calm.”

She glances out the door one last time, obviously hoping Zoe and the others would appear over the horizon and return to safety. But that’s not happening any time soon. She finally can’t look any longer.

“Do it,” she says softly, walking back into the drop ship and starting to calm the others down.

Wells turns back to look out to the forest, feeling the same sort of dread. Hoping, wishing that Clarke would appear at the tree line. But the horn sounds one final time, reminding Wells of what’s to come.

“May we meet again.”

He grits his teeth, shutting his eyes as he pulls the lever down and the drop ship door creaks noisily back into place.

\--

The delinquents are surprisingly quiet the first hour or so that they’re tucked in the drop ship. There’s this sense of seriousness hanging in the air, almost as poison as the acid fog. They all know Clarke and Bellamy are out there somewhere, and they’re about the best public leaders the camp has at this point. They all know it.

Wells knows it too, which is why he doesn’t try to be optimistic to the crowd while they wait. He knows they don’t want to hear from him. Words of encouragement come from Clarke, words of action come from Bellamy. All Wells is good for is words that no one wants to hear. Anything from the mouth of the chancellor’s son might as well be radio static.

After another hour, the discontent start to rise. So there’s palpable tension when there’s finally a loud pound on the drop ship door, setting all the delinquents on high alert.

Monty squints at the door. “What the—?”

“What kind of creature has the ability to knock on the door in acid fog?” Izzy, the dark-skinned, frizzy-haired girl from Harper’s group, mutters uneasily.

No one makes any moves to go see what it could be, until there’s another loud pound. “Yo, Jaha and friends!” Raven’s voice barks from the other side. “Open up!”

Wells is on his feet immediately as chatter erupts behind him.

“Step back, door opening!” Wells calls, waiting a few moments before pulling the lever. Sunlight floods back into the space and fresh air fills their lungs. Seconds later Raven and Clarke climb into the opening, looking sweaty, tired, but unscathed.

“Why’s everyone holed up in this dump?” Raven asks, glancing at the delinquents huddled behind Wells. “I know we left you in charge, but it wasn’t exactly an emergency situation.”

He blinks in surprise. “You didn’t hear the horn? For the acid fog?”

Clarke frowns. “Acid fog? We must’ve been in the bunker.”

“Or not. There wasn’t any fog,” Raven continues. “We walked all the way back here just fine.”

“No fog?”

“What a joke!”

There’s a lot of noise as dozens of teenagers get back to their feet and wander out of the drop ship back into the sunshine. A number of them bump Wells roughly as they pass. Too many to be accidental.

Harper is at his side again, giving him a pissy look. “You told me the fog was coming. We had to rush everyone in here.”

“I swear it was. I heard the horn.” He looks to Clarke. “Remember the horn we heard before we ducked into that rusty death trap in the ground?” Back to Harper. “You heard it too.”

“Maybe it was a different horn.”

“It wasn’t. I swear.”

Clarke shrugs as Raven hops off the drop ship door. “Well, at least if it had been acid fog, you did the right thing. Relax, Wells.”

The last of the delinquents filter out of the drop ship as Clarke follows after Raven. Sterling passes with a couple of other guys, snickering as they cast glances his way.

“God forbid, Wells Jaha turns out to be just as pathetic as his father.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello again to my treasured readers!!  
> so, as you can tell, this chapter was a longer one. i'm still sort of figuring out exactly how i want to decide when they're in two parts or not, but i hope you all enjoy this one in all its double-stuffed glory! i'm very excited to get to contents under pressure and day trip, and i hope you're all pumped to read it.


	4. Contents Under Pressure (Or, The One Where Wells Jaha Needs An Umbrella)

Considering all that had happened since they landed on the ground, weather seemed like a distant afterthought to Wells.

He had studied hard on the Ark, and he remembered his facts. There were four seasons, each one bringing different climate, conditions, and challenges to face. Spring brought rain, sunshine, and flowers. Summer brought blistering heat, the sun bright enough to burn your skin. Fall brought harsh winds, fallen leaves, and chilly air. And winter, winter brought snow, sleet, ice falling from the sky and temperatures almost as cold as stepping off the Ark and into the vacuum of space. Or, so the textbooks warned.

Winter, Wells had thought about. It was always nagging him in the back of his mind. What would they do when the air got colder? If snow fell? They had no shovels, not enough blankets, and definitely not the proper attire. Winter, Wells was preparing for. Thinking about. Calculating.

What Wells had not thought about was hurricanes.

“Get everybody inside, come on!” Clarke commands, pushing past people as she heads to the drop ship door. She looks out to the camp, the view obscured by rain coming in sideways from the power of the wind. The cloths draped against the doorway flap dangerously in the current, creating an imposing _smack, smack, smack_ to compete with the roar of the torrential downpour on the metal of the ship.

Wells approaches her, standing next to her and crossing his arms. “Would be cool if it wasn’t going to kill us.”

“Yeah, that and everything else,” Clarke says with an eye roll, storming away.

Wells knows her shortness isn’t directed at him. With Finn in a precarious condition and having fought with Raven, Clarke’s nerves are more than a little frayed, and Wells knows this. So he gives her space, taking it upon himself to take attendance with the help of the census he and Harper compiled together early that morning before the storm rolled in.

He glances up when Raven curses loudly, focusing his attention on her small form, dwarfed even more by the large monitor she’s attempting to work with. Since venturing off with Clarke the other day, she had been trying and not succeeding to communicate with the Ark. It was tough work for her and Monty, and although Wells wanted to help, he knew he was more helpful staying the hell out of the way.

“Monroe, close the doors,” Clarke shouts over her shoulder as she moves to work with Raven. When the redhead doesn’t immediately move into action, Clarke shoots her a look. “What?”

“There are still people out there,” Monroe points out, standing her ground against Clarke’s intense glare. Wells is impressed, as that’s not an easy feat, one he only accomplished after years of childhood friendship and lots of failed attempts. “Harper and—,”

Wells looks down to his list. Of the five or six people he can’t seem to check off, Harper herself is in fact one of them.

“And we need to focus on the people in here,” Clarke says harshly, just as there’s a loud crash against the drop ship. The sound of multiple delinquents freaking out at once certainly grains on the nerves. “Close the doors.”

Wells knows where Clarke is coming from. But he sees where Monroe is coming from as well, understands it so deeply he can feel it in his bones. What’s the point of trying to survive if you can’t save everyone?

_True survival requires casualties._ That’s what his father always told him, especially when Wells was giving him grief for floating another person for a minor crime. He didn’t like that little life lesson quite as much as his father’s other tidbits.

“Clarke, wait,” he says quickly, stepping around the huddled delinquents to join her and Raven at the monitor. “Let me go and find the others.”

She gives him an incredulous expression. It’s very familiar to him. “Are you insane?”

“It’s just a little rain. Nothing I can’t handle. And there are people out there, our people. We can’t predict when weather is going to strike, but we can try our best to protect our own from its effects.” At the hesitant gleam in her eyes, he takes her arm lightly and pushes harder. “Clarke, trust me. I’ll be careful. Give me this chance.”

He figures, Clarke knowing him as well as she does, that she’ll get his other mission behind this madness. Maybe, if he braves the storm and proves he can protect their people, he’ll finally shake the reputation of his father. An unfair reputation, he knows, but he continues to live under it while they’re here he’ll never be able to move forward. He needs this.

“You focus on Finn and the Ark. Let me handle this.”

After a long moment of consideration, Clarke finally nods. “Go. Don’t do anything stupid.”

Wells grins, patting her shoulder. “I’ll do my best.”

He skirts around the remaining the delinquents assembled and makes his way to the drop ship door, staring out at the cascading rain he’s about to brave. He’s pretty sure he’s already decided to do something stupid, how could he get any more so?

“Hey, wait, are you going? Let me go with you.”

He turns to look over his shoulder as Monroe joins him at his side, peering out into the adverse conditions. She looks as determined as he is, so he can’t very well say no. “It’s Zoe, right?”

She locks eyes with him. Definitely determination. “Call me Monroe.”

After a beat, he nods, holding out his hand. “Monroe. I’m Wells.”

“Knew that. Hard not to,” she admits, taking his hand and shaking it.

Of course, she already knows his name. He has a reputation that precedes him even more than Clarke, and he knows it. He squints out to the camp, trying to figure out the best path out. “Ready to get a little drenched?”

“Well, if it’s only a little.”

“If you two are going to go, then go,” Raven yells over her shoulder. Wells smiles sheepishly, letting Monroe lead the way out the drop ship door before sliding off the ramp after her.

Drenched feels like an understatement. Only a few moments in, both Wells and Monroe are damp, rain dripping down their noses and off the ends of their hair. Wells is grateful that he doesn’t have much hair to begin with. The two of them watch, dripping already, as the drop ship door lifts from the ground and slams shut. If they want back in, they’ll have to wait until after the rain stops.

“I really hope we don’t regret this decision.”

“Regret this?” Monroe says sarcastically, flipping her soaking braids over her shoulders. “How could we possibly regret this?”

Wells laughs before taking the lead, slipping their way through the mud around the drop ship towards the main gate. Once they get through, Monroe ducks under the pathetic cover of a large tree to regroup.

“Is there a plan?”

“Good question. At the current moment, no.”

“Oh, good.”

“Give me a minute,” Wells says, straining to make out more than a few inches ahead of them through the downpour. Quick planning, critical thinking, this is the kind of stuff Wells excels at. “Okay, we don’t want to stay out here for too long if we can help it, so we need to cover ground efficiently. If we head downhill and then circle our way in a spiral back towards camp, we can at least get a good feel for who might still be around the camp area.”

“Okay. Good plan. Lead the way,” Monroe says, gesturing for Wells to make the first move.

Together, they make their way down the slope, even steeper with the momentum of mud beneath their feet and rain clouding their vision. Despite thinking it couldn’t get much worse, the rain only continues to fall, and the wind picks up speed seemingly every minute.

It’s quiet concentration for a while longer as they slowly make their way down and around, further from camp. Wells is already dreading the uphill climb with limited traction thanks to the mud.

Suddenly, Monroe whips her arm out and holds Wells back, almost knocking him over. “Wait! Look.”

Wells has no idea what she’s referring to until she drops to her knees and he follows suit, squinting in the general direction of the forest floor. She points to the ground. “Here.”

Footprints. Barely there, washed away by the rain, but definite remnants of Ark boots.

“They have to be close, don’t they?” Monroe asks. “If they’ve lasted this long in this weather.”

Wells nods, getting to his feet. He moves forward slightly to follow the trail just as a shadow whizzes by his head, followed by the sound of metal hitting a tree. Glancing to his left, he sees the hilt of a dagger sticking out of the bark.

Monroe pops up next to him, eyes wide. “Grounders.”

He isn’t completely sure she’s right or where that dagger even came from, but he trusts her enough not to question it. She was with Bellamy when they went to look for Octavia, she saw Grounders take out Roma and the others. If Monroe thinks it’s Grounders, Wells isn’t going to waste time debating over whether or not she’s sure.

Monroe darts forward and wrenches the dagger from the bark, wielding it in her hand as she pushes Wells forward. “Go, go!”

No need to tell him twice. He and Monroe skid their way across the mud, sprinting in the general direction of their people’s tracks but not wasting time to examine if they’re following the trail. Wells finds himself wishing he had that gun he shot the cougar with, and wishing that he had a bullet to use if he even had the gun in the first place.

Over the rain and their hard breathing, Wells thinks he hears muttering.

“Stop,” he tells Monroe, managing to hold her back by the arm as she swerves a bit on the mud. “Do you hear that?”

Monroe freezes and focuses, staring at the ground as she listens intently. There’s certainly muttering of some kind, frustrated, but there’s no telling whether it’s their people or someone else entirely. Someone they don’t want to come face to face with holding only one dagger.

But she clearly recognizes something. “Harper?” she ventures, shouting loud enough that if it is a Grounder, they’re both done for.

Silence. A painful five seconds of silence.

“Monroe?” a familiar voice calls back. Wells and Monroe exchange a look before running towards the voice, breaking through the underbrush just as the wind picks up, causing leaves, twigs, and other debris to smack them hard in the back as they move.

Harper is crouched next to another figure, trying desperately to rouse them and get them on their feet. She lifts her gaze as the two of them approach, relief flooding her features. “Oh my God,” she says, shouting to be heard over the storm. “How did you find us?”

“Luck,” Wells admits. “What happened? Why are you all out here?”

Upon closer inspection of Harper’s companion, Wells recognizes the frizzy hair. Izzy.

“I came out to get Izzy when it started to rain. Wasn’t bad then. She came out here with Dean to… go for a walk,” she says slowly, obviously indicating that Dean and Izzy had different, less G-rated intentions. “I got here just when the storm got bad.”

“Where’s Dean?” Monroe asks, speaking the same question Wells had been asking in his head.

Without a word, Harper reluctantly nods behind the two of them. They turn, moving forward a bit to find Dean sprawled out on the forest floor, unmoving with a Grounder weapon lodged in his skull. Blood trickles from the gash in his face down across his cheek to the forest floor. Almost like a tear.

Monroe has to look away, shuddering. Wells kneels down next to Dean’s body, lightly touching the weapon with his fingers. Sparkling from the rain, the large metal wheel boasts sharp edges circling all around the perimeter, the only hand-hold being a handlebar grip in the center. Sort of like a saw.

Another delinquent down. If it’s not the Grounders, it’s the weather. If it’s not the weather, it’s each other. How on Earth are they supposed to maintain the human race until the Ark comes down to join them?

Wells grits his teeth, closing his hand around the grip. He gently closes Dean’s eyes with his other hand, patting his shoulder grimly. “May we meet again,” he whispers, before building up the nerve to dislodge the blade from Dean’s skull. There’s a sickening squish.

“It had to have been Grounders, right?” Harper continues, brushing the wet hair from Izzy’s face as Wells walks back over to them, holding the gruesome weapon at his side. “What are you going to do with that?”

He glances down at it before shrugging. “Better to take it than to let them collect it again, right?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I guess that makes sense.” Harper goes back to trying to rouse Izzy, shifting her body against her knees. Seeing how drippy Harper’s hair is, the efficiency of Monroe’s three-braid style becomes much clearer. “She’s still alive, but I think she passed out from shock. Lucky I found her and not the Grounders. But we have to move her or they’re going to come looking for their weapons, and they’ll find us instead.”

Wells can feel the rain getting harder against his shoulders. He nods. “Right.”

“I can help,” Monroe offers, leaning over next to Harper and taking Izzy’s legs. “Take her arms?”

Together, Harper and Monroe are able to carry the unconscious Izzy.

“Back to camp?”

“We can’t,” Monroe says. “The drop ship door is shut, and they won’t be able to hear us in this storm.”

“Not to mention Grounders are still parading the exterior of the camp. They shot at Monroe and me, so they know we’re still out here. And we’ll never make it up that hill in this mud, especially carrying Izzy.”

Harper huffs, frustrated. “So what do we do? Sit here and wait to get stabbed?”

More quick planning. Wells thinks on his feet. “I think I know where we can go.” He starts further down the hill, waving for the girls to follow. “Come on.”

After a slippery slide along the tree line, Wells finally reaches his destination. Pushing a mess of fallen branches aside, he uncovers the entrance to the abandoned bunker. He knows Clarke was the last one down there to their knowledge, and he’s praying no one else has found it since. Getting a slick grip on the door, he manages to pry open the hatch.

Monroe and Harper stare down at it in awe, still cradling Izzy between them. Wells grins.

“After you, girls.”

It’s not the perfect hideout from the storm—there are a couple of leaks in the door after years of nuclear weather and it’s even colder down below than standing in the sheets of rain. As Monroe and Harper lay Izzy down on one of the beds, Wells thinks about the fact that the lake by the bunker was frosting at the edges. Winter is coming, and they’re wildly unprepared.

Grounders. Weather. Each other. Winter. How many ways can you kill a delinquent? They’re probably going to find out. At least a hundred.

Monroe walks away from Izzy’s unconscious form, collapsing onto the other cot and leaning her head back against the wall with a deep sigh. Harper settles next to Izzy and continues to gently nudge her, grabbing a blanket from the shelf and dabbing her face.

That is a motion that appeals to Wells in his drenched form. He grabs another blanket from the shelf, avoiding the ones haphazardly tossed on the floor, and tosses one to Monroe as well.

Wells examines the Grounder weapon ripped from Dean’s face more carefully. Considering they seem to pull more and more elaborate attacks out of their arsenal, he doesn’t see how any of them stand a chance. They have tiny knives crafted from seatbelts and ship parts, not throwing axes and spears.

“They’re going to wipe us out.”

Wells looks up from the cold metal. “Huh?”

Monroe is watching the weapon in his hands as well, her expression grim. “They’re going to wipe us out,” she repeats dully, lingering on the blade one last moment before letting her glare drift to lock eyes with him. “Aren’t they?”

Harper gazes at him too. All eyes on him with the Grounder weapon in his hands.

Honestly, Wells doesn’t know what to say. Logistically, realistically, yes, the Grounders are going to wipe them out. It’s survival of the fittest, and the delinquents are statistically unfit to survive lacking the knowledge of the terrain, of weaponry, going blindly on the sheer will to live. With strategic leaders and a more comprehensive attack plan, the Grounders can and will annihilate them.

But, still, Wells can’t bring himself to believe it. Maybe it’s the way he was raised, but he feels intrinsically built to never give up. Not without a long, bitter fight. Yes, the Grounders have advantages against them in almost every field. But the will to live is a powerful tool. It’s the same determination that got them up in the Ark a hundred years ago, the same drive that his father used to guide the Ark and its residents every day. It’s the strength that allowed him to survive the stab to the neck.

They weren’t just going to go down like dominos. He would keep that promise, to his grave if that’s the way it had to be. He, all of the delinquents, they’d go down swinging.

He drops the blade against the shelf, wandering over to join Monroe on the couch. He leans forward against his knees, releasing a similar sigh to her previous one. “No way to tell. But they aren’t going to do it easily.”

“How are we supposed to take them on?” Harper asks sharply, leaning back on her palms. Izzy’s head is resting comfortably in her lap. “Put up our fists and hope for the best?”

“If that’s how it goes down, then yeah,” Wells admits. “But maybe it doesn’t have to be that way. Maybe we can work something out, get out of this via the peaceful route.”

Monroe snorts. “What peaceful route? They are throwing axes at our skulls.”

“People are programmed to work together towards common goals. Towards prosperity, towards good. I believe that. It’s what got the twelve nations of the Ark to come together, and it’ll be what gets us through this too. Our people sent us down here to survive, and that’s what we’re going to do.”

Monroe and Harper exchange skeptical eyebrow raises, but there’s a glint in their eyes that lets Wells know that to some degree, in the smallest capacity, they want to believe him. They’ll put up the fight with him. And that’s reassuring in a way Wells can’t adequately express.

Suddenly, Izzy jolts and groans, causing all three of them to jump.

“Iz?” Harper asks tentatively, her hands hovering over Izzy’s face but not certain what to do.

Another moment of tense silence, before Izzy moans again, her eyes fluttering open dazedly. “What’s going on?”

“Oh, God,” Harper breathes, breaking into a smile of relief.

Monroe and Wells are both on their feet in seconds, dropping down next to Izzy and crowding her with reassurances. It’s clearly overwhelming, and Wells can relate—he remembers that feeling of coming to and feeling like you missed everything, no matter how little or how much time passed.

Harper senses the feeling, sliding out from underneath Izzy’s head and letting her rest more comfortably. “Let’s see if we can find some medicine or something in this place. Come on, Monroe, help me,” she requests, climbing over the bed and dropping onto the floor.

“Medicine? In here? You don’t really think—,” Monroe starts.

“Yes, I really do. Come on,” Harper insists, taking her hand and yanking her from the floor. They migrate to the other end of the bunker, giving Izzy a little more room to breathe.

Wells tries his best to look comforting, giving her a gentle smile. “Trust me, the confusion will wear off eventually.”

“Really? Even down here on the ground?”

Wells thinks, then laughs a bit. “Well, okay, some confusion hangs around. But mostly, yes.” Izzy takes a deep breath, and Wells waits a moment before continuing. He feels haunted by his own experience of this kind. “Do you remember anything about what happened?”

She closes her eyes, humming distantly. She’s evidently not yet completely present. “We were going for a walk. Started to rain. Dean said, ‘no big deal.’ But it was. Grounders… they came out of nowhere.” Her eyes fly open, wide. “Shit. Dean. Where’s Dean?”

There’s a weird feeling in Wells’ gut that he’s never really had to face before, but he knows his father has known all too well. Has adapted to. The feeling in his stomach as Izzy looks into his eyes, expecting an answer and hoping that it’s not bad news, the worst kind of news, but sort of knowing it is. Thelonious had told him, multiple times, that there was no good way to break the news that someone had died, in ordinary or extraordinary circumstances.

Wells had never met a better orator than his father, and even he didn’t have the words to deliver this particular blow.

“I’m sorry.” All Wells can manage is a sympathetic frown and a light pat to her shoulder. He struggles for something else to say. “True survival requires casualties.”

As he guessed, she expected this answer. Grief flashes across her face for mere seconds before she’s collecting herself, even in her half-conscious state. “Told him it was stupid to go off alone. Didn’t listen. Guess that goes to show you why we need leaders and rules.”

“Even leaders make stupid decisions sometimes,” Wells points out. He’s still not entirely sold that sending all of them to ground as the Ark’s last chance of longevity was the best plan on his father’s part.

“Hey,” she says, shaking her head lightly. “Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“Discredit your dad like that. Everyone else does it enough, are you really going to start doing it too?” At the absolute shock present on Wells’ face, she goes on. “I think people are way too hard on your dad. And you, for that matter. I know I wouldn’t want his job. People think it’s easy to make smart decisions, the _right_ decisions, until they’re the ones calling the shots.”

Maybe she’s not completely right in the head, maybe she fell too hard and knocked her brain around, maybe she’s just rebellious against popular opinion, but Izzy’s words in that moment impact Wells more than he anticipated. Knowing that there’s someone out there who doesn’t hate his father, who doesn’t impose judgment upon him because of it, is like lifting an enormous weight off of his shoulders. Even if he’s got years left of torment to endure, he’ll hang onto those words to get him through. Like his father’s advice, and Clarke’s friendship.

He feels tears prick the corners of his eyes and wipes them immediately. He’s glad Izzy’s eyes are closed again.

The group jumps again when there’s a loud banging from above. Wells and Monroe exchange cautious looks, eyes widening when the banging happens a second time. Monroe’s hand goes for the knife. Harper mutters, “Grounders?”

“Would Grounders really knock?” Izzy snaps irritably.

“Hey,” a familiar voice shouts from above. Another knock. “Open up, chancellor!”

“Miller?” Monroe ventures, getting to her feet and heading over to the door.

Wells is right at her heels, and when they push open the bunker door, Nathan Miller and Monty are grinning down at them, a cloudy but rainless sky painting the backdrop grey behind them.

“Yow, what happened to you guys? Get a little caught in the rain?” Miller teases, squinting into the bunker to catch glimpses of Izzy and Harper as well. “You’ve looked better, Iz.”

“Float yourself, Miller.”

The two of them hop down and help get Izzy out of the bunker, Harper and Miller taking control of her safe travel. Monroe sends them off and waits for Wells to emerge from the doors, giving him a nod before walking between one group and the other, acting as patrol with her Grounder knife still tight in her fingertips.

“Glad to see they’re okay,” Monty admits, walking side by side with Wells.

He nods. “What have we missed? Nothing much, with the rain? How’s Finn?”

Monty lifts a finger to silence him. “You’ve got a lot of questions. Unfortunately, I’ve got a lot of answers.”

“Unfortunately?” Wells’ eyes widen. “What happened? Is Finn dead?”

“No, actually, that’s all the good news I’ve got. Finn is going to be okay, we think.”

Wells hardly has time to be relieved, knowing it’s the only good thing he’s going to get from Monty today. “What’s the rest of it?”

Monty takes a short breath, exhaling loudly for emphasis. “Let’s just say,” he starts, speaking in low tones so that the others don’t overhear. “We’ve got a new resident in camp.”

Wells isn’t sure he wants to know what that means, and by the time they get back to camp and he’s shown exactly what it means, he wishes he never knew. The Grounder hanging by chains in the top floor of the drop ship looks more like an invitation for the Grounders to come annihilate them than anything else they may have done so far. It has bad news written all over it. Wells knows he doesn’t want to start fighting back eye-for-an-eye style.

_True survival requires casualties._ That’s what his father always said.

But Wells isn’t sure he’s ready to start applying that logic against another human being. Grounder or not.


	5. Day Trip (Or, The One Where Wells Jaha Goes Nutty)

The moment Wells sees his father again since coming to the ground, he loses his ability to think.

There he is, sitting in the council room and nodding along as Clarke explains their situation, their accomplishments, the problem with the Grounders. The eerie fluorescent lighting of the Ark casts an eerie blue glow on his skin, making him appear pale and somewhat sickly. He looks just as tired as he did when Wells was living in space, bags constantly under his eyes and barely hidden behind an authoritative expression of deep thought. No one would ever question Thelonious Jaha’s fatigue when he seemed so lost in thought, thinking about important matters. Organization of their home, the survival of the Ark. The prosperity of their people.

All Wells can find himself thinking as Clarke goes on and on is whether they’re both going to have that same expression soon, and how long it’ll take for it to settle in. Considering how stressful everything has been so far, he wouldn’t be surprised if he’s already mastered it.

“Temperatures are dropping,” Clarke states, expertly concealing any uncertainties she may have with professionalism and her commandeering presence that put her in charge of all this in the first place. It’s natural for her, Wells knows, being in charge. Not that she prefers it that way, but it’s an inclination. It makes sense in her head, she is a woman born for a role like chancellor. The only reason Wells knows there’s imperfection and anxiety within her is because he’s known her for many, many years.

“That is to be expected,” Thelonious says thoughtfully, tapping his fingers on his chin. “I’m sure you all remember Pike’s class on earth skills. There was a rather thorough lesson on weather.”

“Actually, I never attended the class,” Clarke explains, “I was opted out. But Wells took it on his own accord when we were younger. He is the one who has been bothering me to start strategizing on the weather.”

For the first time since the call began, Thelonious focuses on Wells for longer than a brief second. He gives him a nod. “Not surprisingly. You’re a good student.”

Wells manages a smile. Despite all the confusion being down here has stirred up within him about his father, he has always valued his opinion highly. Especially his opinion on him.

Clarke gives Wells a faint smile before getting back to business. “The point is, it’s going to get colder here. Whether it’s fall and we’re simply not used to it, or winter is approaching, we don’t have a lot of time to wait around and freeze to death. I’m working on a plan.”

Thelonious nods. “Anything else I should know? In case communication should be disrupted in the unforeseeable future.”

“I’ll call back as soon as I get back from exploring the depot Kane suggested. Wells is going to maintain the camp and keep an eye out on the Grounder prisoner, with Miller’s help. We’ll keep you posted.”

After a long moment, Thelonious gives Clarke one final nod. “Sounds like you’ve got things under control. Hopefully, we’ll be able to get things going up here and join you soon enough with supplies and reinforcements.” There’s a pause. “Would you mind, Clarke, if I had a moment alone with Wells?”

Another uncomfortable pause. Clarke glances at him, examining him quickly more any signs of distress at this request.

Wells would do the same for her if Abby was the one onscreen—he knows Clarke wants nothing to do with her mother right now, despite how much she may be able to help them. He respects that, and he appreciates that she’s always thinking of him in the same light with the same respect. But he feels amazingly unmoved at the prospect of a conversation alone with his father. Neither enthused nor distraught.

Clarke reads all this with one fast glance. She gives Thelonious a cordial grin before nodding. “Of course. I’ll leave you to it.”

Thelonious returns the smile. “Thank you, Clarke. You’re doing well.”

She takes a deep breath, containing herself. A brief moment of vulnerability. Then she disappears through the drop ship curtain, back out into the chaos.

Wells wordlessly shifts into the chair that Clarke was seated in previously, clearing his throat as his father looks down upon him. It feels weird that he’s only a few feet above him on this screen, but in reality he’s endless miles away. It’s hard to wrap his head around.

“Wells,” Thelonious exhales, releasing a breath he didn’t know he was holding. “It’s… so good to see you.”

In a mixture of relief and horror, Wells feels pain in the back of his throat, warning him of tears forming. He swallows the emotion down and smiles instead, a gesture that feels more true to his feelings than a bunch of crying. “You too, dad.”

“When your wristlet went out, well, I didn’t know what to think. Abby tried to tell me that you would last much longer than a day, but from so far away...” He trails off, before switching gears. Back to logistics, away from emotions. “We’re lucky Raven Reyes made it down to you all so that we could get in touch. Communication is going to be crucial these next couple of weeks.”

Logistics is perfectly fine with Wells. “Definitely. When you manage to get down here, I can share with you all the information Clarke and I have compiled. And Harper McIntyre and I, we made a census so that we could keep track of everyone. Make sure everyone was accounted for.”

Thelonious smiles lightly, but there’s a hesitancy in his eyes that Wells doesn’t miss. Before he can question it, his father is moving right along. “McIntyre? Your Unity Day flag bearer?”

Wells grins, nodding. “Yeah. I told her that’s how you remember her.”

“She’s hardworking and determined. Keep her around, that’s an asset to have on deck.” He shifts the subject unexpectedly. “Clarke told me before you arrived about the attack on you. Are you alright? How are your injuries?”

Of course, Clarke told his father. He knows it’s because she cares about him, and is more worried than she’ll admit, but in this particular case Clarke can float herself. The last thing Wells wants is to give his father another thing to worry about. “They’re manageable. Some take… a bit of adjusting,” he says after a moment, holding up his hand to show his father his missing fingers.

Thelonious’s glare immediately hardens. It’s something defensive, something dangerous. Wells understands—he has trouble looking at it too.

“Someone did that to you?”

“Yes. But they’re gone now. Things have been fine since then.”

“Were you able to give it the proper treatment?”

“I gave it whatever they could give it and followed your advice. Focus on something else.”

The defensive glare is replaced with a prideful beam. “Smart boy. I followed the same thinking, after Abby healed my gunshot wound. It wasn’t too harmful, a botched assassination at best. But I used the opportunity to fight through the pain and start working harder at getting us in communication with you all, maintaining systems on the Ark, possibly preparing to follow you all to the ground. And so far, it has paid off. Here we are, conversing.”

In the midst of all that, Wells stops cold on one phrase. _Gunshot wound._ He had been so preoccupied with everything going on since Raven arrived that he completely forgot about what happened to his father on the Ark. What Bellamy Blake did to his father.

Two emotions surge quickly from this reminder—guilt and resentment. Guilt towards himself for disregarding his father’s wellbeing, and resentment towards Bellamy Blake, who always seemed to get away with murder, almost literally.

“If you come down here, what’s going to happen to Bellamy?”

Thelonious shrugs, his expression unreadable. “There’s no way to say for certain. Who knows what will happen when our people finally hit ground for good? Everything could change. There’s nothing to say that our justice system will remain as it is. Floating was never a very popular punishment, but it maintained order.”

“Yeah, that level of rigidity probably won’t fly down here,” Wells agrees with a chuckle. “But you think he should be punished, right?”

After a brief pause, Thelonious nods. “For all intents and purposes, yes. Attempted murder is a heinous crime, even for a desperate man.”

And yet, it happens basically once a day on the ground. Wells can feel a headache forming behind his eyes.

“There are other parents waiting to speak to their children,” Thelonious stumbles after a long moment, forcing a goodbye but evidently not ready to walk away. “I’m glad to see you’re safe. I know you’re doing important things down there.”

The pain in his throat is back again. Wells nods, smiling sheepishly. “I’m glad to see you safe too.”

Neither of them wants to say goodbye. It feels too final. Finally, Thelonious clears his throat. “May we meet again.”

Wells gets to his feet. “ _When_ we meet again,” he emphasizes, forcing himself to believe his own words. The determination earns an appreciative grin from his father. Then, he steps out, sending Dax in after him and taking in a deep breath.

The air is cold, his breath escaping his lips in a visible cloud. Whatever Clarke finds in that bunker, he’s praying that it gives them more relief than they’ve been receiving so far.

He’s distracted from the cold and his emotions a moment later when Miller stumbles from the drop ship, cradling his face in his hands and cursing loudly.

Wells approaches him and helps him stand upright, Harper joining him seconds later.

“What the hell happened?” Harper says shrilly, making Miller drop his hand from his face long enough to inspect the damage. Before Wells can get a better look, Miller tears himself away and throws his arms out in frustration.

“That stupid Grounder hit me. He didn’t just hit me, he fucking headbutted me! Like some kind of fucking animal. Fuck that stupid—!” Miller shouts angrily, kicking at the dirt aggressively.

“Hey, calm down, Nathaniel,” Jasper calls from a table nearby, where he and Monty are happily sorting nuts and berries. “Have a Jobi nut!”

“They’re delicious and nutritious,” Monty adds wisely.

“It’s practically malicious,” Jasper continues.

“Will you two shut it?” he snaps back irritably, before turning on Wells and Harper again. “Bellamy won’t let us kill him. Why are we keeping him alive? He’s no good to us. Don’t you think our people that have fallen at _their_ hands deserve some vengeance?”

“Because we aren’t them,” Wells says decisively, locking eyes with Miller. “We don’t decide who lives and who dies. Isn’t torturing the guy enough? Haven’t you had your fill?”

Miller rolls his eyes. “Does it get exhausting, being so perfect? Do you have to work hard to be such a pristine angel?”

“Okay, calm down,” Harper says sternly, grabbing Miller’s shoulder and steering him away. Wells watches him go, a new kind of resentment starting to bubble along with the amount reserved specifically for Bellamy.

Out of the corner of his eye, Wells catches Octavia listening in on the conversation, darting into the drop ship and out of sight before he can say anything to point out that he noticed. He wonders for a long moment what Octavia could possibly be doing caring about Miller’s dramatic antics.

The curiosity is enough to send him heading into the ship after her, just as Bellamy leaves. They cross paths, bumping shoulders momentarily. Bellamy doesn’t apologize or look back. Wells only spares a glance before moving on. Bellamy Blake isn’t worth the time.

He makes his way across the drop ship floor to the ladder swiftly, reaching the bottom just as the hatch door closes after Octavia. What is she doing up there with the Grounder prisoner? Torture doesn’t really seem like her style. Gripping the rail, Wells begins the climb up after her.

The moment he pokes his head through the door he’s met with a loud cry from Octavia.

“Holy hell. Wells? What the hell!”

She steps away from the Grounder and stalks over to him, grabbing his hand and pulling him from the ladder with impressive strength. She slams the hatch down behind him, turning a near murderous glare on him. “You scared the hell out of me. How was I supposed to know that was you and not Bellamy? Or Miller? Why the hell are you following me anyway?”

It’s a lot of questions for Wells to process at once. The Grounder watches him, still chained up, with curious eyes.

He raises a hand slowly, letting his brain catch up with him. “I was just curious. I saw you eavesdropping on Miller and me. Not that it was hard, considering he was, well, shouting and such.”

Octavia sighs, getting to her feet and wandering back over to the Grounder. She paces nervously, chewing on her thumbnail as Wells gets up to join her. The Grounder keeps his eyes on her, looking the most content Wells has seen him since they dragged him in here. “What we’re doing is wrong, Wells,” she says emphatically, gesturing to the way he’s chained up. “He doesn’t deserve this. He didn’t hurt us. Not to mention, he saved my life.”

Wells examines him for a long moment before nodding. “I know. I agree.”

She turns to him, eyes wide. “You do?”

He nods shortly. “Not that my word against Bellamy’s would do a lot of good with most of these guys, but I don’t think he deserves this.” He makes a point of locking eyes with the Grounder, nodding towards him. “I don’t think _you_ deserve this.”

“Lincoln,” Octavia says softly, smiling fondly at the Grounder.

Wells looks back and forth between the two of them, trying to put the pieces together. He figures it’s better not to get into all the details, but the idea of communication between the two parties intrigues him. “That your name?”

The Grounder nods, before speaking hoarsely in a whisper. “Lincoln.”

“Lincoln. Alright. I’m Wells.”

“You have to help me get him out,” Octavia pleads, glancing towards the hatch. “I don’t know what else they’re going to do to him. You’ve seen Miller, he has murder in his eyes whenever he’s in here. Not only is it unfair and not right, but I think we’re missing a huge opportunity here. Lincoln, he’s one of them but he’s peaceful. And he speaks our language. We can communicate, he has connections, maybe we can work out a deal of some sort.”

Octavia and Lincoln show more promise of survival right now than any other strategic attacks they’ve got planned against their surmountable enemies. Wells thinks on this, picking at his fingernails mindlessly.

“But there’s no chance of that ever working if we torture him to death,” Octavia breathes, staring at Wells with wide eyes. “Please, help me get him out.”

Going against the majority feels like shooting himself in the foot, trashing all the progress he’s made in regards to rehabilitating his own image, even if it’s abysmally minimal. But his morals are his most trustworthy compass in his life, it’s what he learned from his father. And if he doesn’t follow them now, then what makes him better than Murphy? Or Bellamy?

Finally, Wells pats Octavia’s shoulder. “I will.”

Octavia sighs with relief before surprising Wells with a hug, wrapping her arms around him and squeezing tight. Wells can’t remember the last time someone hugged him. He and Clarke were never touchy-feely friends. And he’s never really been close with anyone else. But having someone hug him, show him that appreciation and affection, gives him a sense of catharsis he didn’t realize he needed. He hesitates before hugging her back.

“Thank you,” she breathes, pulling back and grinning. “Thank you!”

“I’ll do what I can, but I’m not sure I’ll be much help. I still have to watch camp, and everyone is watching my ass for me to slip up. I won’t be able to do much without being noticed.”

“That’s okay,” she says excitedly, looking to Lincoln with an overwhelmed smile. “Leave all that to me. I just need you to do what you do, and watch the others. I’ll make it work.”

“If Miller or Bellamy catches you, you’re dead,” Wells warns.

She gives him a determined glare. “I’m not afraid.”

With one more arm pat for Octavia and a weak smile from Lincoln, Wells descends the ladder again, heading towards the drop ship door just as Miller reenters, holding a piece of cold meat to his bruising forehead.

“What the hell are you doing in here? Bellamy trusted me to watch the Grounder,” Miller says fiercely, suspicion lacing his tone.

Wells remains nonchalant. Now, there are serious matters on the line, and he needs to have his act together. “Just doing my job, keeping an eye on things. Clarke trusted me with that responsibility. So I guess we’re basically even, huh?”

Another form enters from the curtain—Jasper. He grins at them both, rubbing Miller’s shoulder and swaying a bit. “Come on, you guys. Let’s not fight. Seriously, have a Jobi nut. They’re so good. Seriously, I want you both to put one in your mouths right now.”

“Get off of me, man!” Miller says defensively.

“Eat one! You’ll be in a better place!” Jasper insists, attempting to shove the Jobi nut into Miller’s mouth by force. It offers enough of a distraction for Octavia to slip down the ladder unnoticed. She exchanges a nod with Wells before dashing around them and back out into the camp, a plan obviously brewing behind those sparkling eyes.

Wells smiles in spite of himself before stepping into the fray, tearing Jasper from Miller. “Come on, now, let’s not make a big deal of this. Of course, I’ll have some Jasper.” He takes the Jobi nuts from Jasper’s palms and downs a couple at once, smirking at Miller.

Begrudgingly, Miller takes a couple and chews them as well. “These taste like shit.”

“Oh, just wait, my friend,” Jasper says seriously, popping another into his own mouth and giving a handful to each of them. “It’s not the taste you’re going to enjoy.”

Wells shrugs, downing his handful before getting back to business, maintaining camp and keeping an eye out for Octavia.

\--

About an hour later, Wells decides to take a brief break from patrolling the camp to check on Raven and Finn.

Although Finn survived the attack and the following surgery, he’s got a lot of recovering to do and has been mandated to bed rest by Clarke until he can be comfortably mobile again. Wells remembers that feeling of being bedridden, feeling useless, and he knows Finn is struggling with it the same way he did. It’s hard, wanting to be in the front lines doing everything and being able to do precisely nothing.

The unexpected caveat to keeping Finn in bed is that they’ve lost Raven’s amazing skillset as well. She’s at his beck and call basically twenty-four seven, sitting by his bed and talking him through his boredom. It amazes Wells, how dedicated she is to him. Sure, it’s young love and years of friendship. But Wells understood that Clarke had to be up and running when he was down, and he thinks Finn would understand that about Raven too.

Then again, Wells supposes it must feel a little different when your young lover and lifelong friend cheats on you.

He tries not to let it impact his opinion of Finn, he really does. What happens between Finn and Clarke, Finn and Raven, Finn and Bellamy for that matter, is Finn’s business. Their business, certainly not Wells’. And Finn, despite his romantic altercations, is a reliable, capable guy. It seems foolish to hold reservations about his actions when they have no impact on Wells personally. Still, he can’t imagine ever doing that to someone he cares about, no matter how many miles away they are.

He pokes his head in, seeing Raven resilient at Finn’s side as usual. Finn is out cold, snoozing.

“How’s he doing?”

She shrugs lightly, her hand resting by Finn’s on the bed but not holding it. “Fine. He’s just resting now, I guess. Like he always is.”

Wells nods, examining Raven. The fatigue on her face feels hauntingly familiar. They all wear it in similar style, just on different levels with different amounts of pressure. “He’s going to be okay, Raven.”

“Yeah, okay. Thanks for the pep talk.”

“I’m serious,” Wells says, “Jasper survived. I survived. So will he.”

She glares at him over her shoulder for a long moment before softening, giving him a slight nod and letting her gaze drift back to Finn. Wells wishes he could do something to cheer her up, but he’s out of ideas and notoriously bad at comforting people. He tried when Clarke’s father died, but she wasn’t exactly friendly with him at that point anyway, considering the circumstances.

Tentatively, he reaches forward and pats her shoulder. “Let me know if you need anything.”

All she gives him is another brief nod. Slowly, he excuses himself from the tent.

The moment he steps back out into the chilly air, he hears someone calling for him.

“Wells!”

He hesitates, not sure he heard correctly. He recognizes the voice, of course he’d know it anywhere, but she’s not here right now. She couldn’t be back already, could she?

“Wells, hurry up!”

Clarke. Calling for him, but nowhere in sight. Wells wanders forward slightly, listening carefully and not paying attention to Monty stumbling past him, laughing. Many other delinquents are wandering around in a similar sort of daze but Wells tries to focus his attention on Clarke’s voice, which is suddenly a harder task than usual. His senses aren’t cooperating like they should.

“Wells!”

Catching the sound, he follows the direction and takes off at a run, heading straight out of camp and into the woods without a second thought.

“Clarke?” he shouts, having lost direction and trajectory, running towards nothing. He stops, leaning against a tree. Looking forward, he sees the world start to tilt slightly in front of him. He blinks, rubbing his eyes. But the world won’t stop leaning.

Until Clarke, again. “Wells!” The world immediately straightens out and Wells continues downhill, skidding a bit on the dirt until he stumbles over a tree root, tumbling the rest of the way down and landing on the leaves with a substantial thud.

He groans, rolling onto his back and trying to blink off the daze. Gazing up through the trees, he squints away at the sunlight streaming down on him, suddenly unbearably bright and unbearably hot.

“Wells,” Clarke mutters, hurt lacing her voice.

He sits up and whips around, finally finding her. She’s standing there in front of him, her hair braided back and wearing her favorite pink shirt. He pulls himself to his feet and tries not to stumble, narrowing his eyes to maintain focus. “Clarke. I’m here. What’s up?”

She shakes her head at him, her lower lip trembling. He cocks his head to the side. “Where’s Bellamy?”

“You killed him!” she finally blurts out, her voice cracking. Wells is taken aback by the pain and rage on her face. Her eyes are welling with tears. “You just let them kill him!”

“Who? Bellamy?”

“My father, Wells! He’s dead! Because of you.”

None of this makes sense. Wells takes a long time to process things, finally shaking his head slowly. “Clarke. We talked about this. Remember? I never turned your father in. I wouldn’t do that.”

“But my mother did, and you let me hate you. You knew my mother did it and you could have told me, we could have done something!”

“What are you talking about? We talked this out. We’re fixing it.”

“We can never fix this,” she says fiercely, her eyes stormy. “I hate you. And we’re never going to be the same.”

Wells feels panic bubbling at the back of his throat. He steps forward, reaching out towards her. “Clarke!”

“Get away from me!” she shouts, but rather than backing away she lunges forward, and before Wells can get a grip on what’s happening it’s not Clarke but Charlotte lunging towards him, holding John Murphy’s knife in her hands.

Wells cries out and backs away, avoiding the swipe of her knife as she continues to back him further into the trees. “I’m just slaying my demons!” she screeches, narrowly missing Well’s torso as he jumps out of the way. “You’re a demon, Wells Jaha!”

“No, stop!”

“You’re my demon. You’re their demons! That’s all you are, all you can ever be!”

“No. That’s not true. I’m not—,”

Suddenly, it’s not Charlotte but Sterling standing in front of him. He shakes his head, lifting his spear. “Just as pathetic as your father.” He pokes Wells with the butt of the spear and sends him tripping backwards over a small boulder.

Wells hits the ground stomach first, yelling in pain and crawling to get out of the way of the spear. When he flips back onto his back, Sterling is gone. In his place stands a tall, imposing shadow. Wells sluggishly lifts his gaze to find the cold eyes of his father, staring down at him.

Trembling, Wells exhales shakily. “Dad?”

Thelonious doesn’t say anything, just continues to stand there scrutinizing him with his glare. Wells pushes himself into a sitting position, not sure what to say. He’s horrified to feel tears forming in his eyes, crying in front of his father.

“Dad,” he murmurs. His voice cracks. “Help me.”

“Help you?” he finally says, laughing shortly and shaking his head. People had referred to Thelonious Jaha as condescending, but Wells never understood how they got that impression of his father. Now, hunched in the shadow of his imposing form and shrinking under his disdain, he understands it. “Why on Earth would I help you when you got yourself into this mess?”

“What?” Wells snaps, the tears spilling over in frustration before he can control them. “This isn’t my mess! You sent me down here!”

“You chose to come down here, if I recall correctly. You said it would be best to help the others, since they may not be able to take care of themselves. Noble, it was.” Thelonious makes a disappointed face, clasping his hands together and keeping a good distance from his son. “Lot of good it’s done.”

Wells screws his eyes shut, shaking his head and gasping out a sob. He hits the ground in frustration, locking eyes with his father again. “I’m trying my best!”

“And failing. You have no idea what it means to be a leader, do you? Perhaps you simply don’t have what it takes. No wonder Clarke has the run of the place.”

“I’m trying!” Wells screams again, awkwardly climbing to stand upright again. He points at his father, his hand shaking with emotion. “I’m trying, but because of you no one will take me seriously. I was screwed before I even stepped foot on that stupid drop ship. I’m trying but it doesn’t matter! They hate you!”

“Wells.” The voice doesn’t sound quite right coming out of his father’s mouth, but it goes back to normal a moment later. “The fact of the matter is, they hate you too.”

Wells shakes his head frantically, backing away from his father and running into a tree, trying to stabilize himself. His legs are like jelly.

“Wells, wait!”

“GO AWAY!” he roars, attempting one last time to get away but losing control of his limbs entirely, collapsing to the ground. The world goes black for a moment, all his senses gone entirely. For a few seconds, it’s unsettlingly quiet.

Just like before, the first sense to come back to him is touch. He feels hands on his face and sluggishly moves to bat them away. When he opens his eyes, he’s confused by the blurry image of Monroe kneeling in front of him.

“Are you okay?” she asks him bluntly, pulling back from his face and allowing him to adjust. He blinks, taking in the somewhat familiar forest around him. She offers a hand, pulling him upright into a sitting position.

Wells hesitantly scans the trees, looking for any sign of Charlotte, Clarke, his father. But there’s no one but Monroe. With a deep sigh, Wells falls back to lean against the tree trunk nearby, closing his eyes and wiping the sweat from his face. He’s not sure what’s sweat and what’s tears.

Monroe kneels in front of him again, waiting patiently for him to come back to reality. Breathing unevenly, he chokes out a question. “What the hell happened?”

“Those nuts Jasper and Monty had? They were fucked up. People started hallucinating back at camp. I just finished calming down Harper when Raven found me. She told me you had just run off and said to go look for you. So I did.”

Wells takes this in. It all felt so real. Too real to be a hallucination. “How did you find me?”

“It wasn’t that hard. You were screaming a lot.”

“How come you didn’t have any? Hallucinations, I mean.”

Monroe shrugs, settling back on her heels and scooting next to him, leaning back against the tree as well. “Don’t like nuts.”

Wells, still shaking, manages a laugh. “Lucky break.”

They settle into a plaintive silence. Wells isn’t sure how long they sit there, but the sky grows more orange as the sun sets above them. Monroe doesn’t urge him to get up or rush him back to business—she just sits there with him and lets him calm himself down as the day turns into night.

“What….” Wells begins, trying to figure out how to phrase this question. “What did you see, exactly?”

“You were screaming at someone. I caught up just as you tripped over the rock. Considering the stuff you were saying, I figured it had to be your dad. You were worked up. Made the most sense.” She pauses for a moment, before tilting her head to look at him. “You think your dad really screwed you over down here, huh?”

Wells doesn’t return the eye contact. He stares straight ahead, shrugging lightly.

“You think we’re really constrained by what our fathers do?” she continues softly, moving her gaze from him to the rock he tripped over previously. She stops for a moment before continuing, her words tumbling more quickly. “I don’t think we are. I don’t think we should be. If we’re held back by what our fathers do, then how do we ever become our own people? How do we make sure we don’t make the same mistakes? If we’re restrained by all their decisions, then aren’t we destined to end up just like them?”

Wells isn’t sure how to answer. It’s questions he’s found himself asking in his head, millions of times since they hit the ground.

“I’m not going to be my father,” Monroe whispers tightly, clenching her jaw.

His turn to look at her. He tilts his head in her direction, examining her briefly until he manages to speak again. “What’s up with your father?”

“Nothing now. He’s dead now. Floated.” She doesn’t meet his eyes and speaks quickly, almost as if she doesn’t want to say anything but it’ll kill her if she doesn’t. “Deserved it too. He helped run this stupid drug ring on the Ark. Not like, drugs, but pharmaceutical stuff. Clarke would probably remember Abby complaining about stocks disappearing when we were younger, it became this big deal and my dad realized he was in way over his head.”

“So they floated him for selling drugs?”

“No. Well, that was the charge. But that’s not the worst part, not really.” She takes a deep breath, closing her eyes. “When he realized they were going to get caught, he freaked. So he turned in all his buddies who were a part of the ring, in the hopes that it would get him off the hook. It didn’t.”

Wells feels like he remembers this case. Remembers Abby and his father talking about it at length, although this was long before he became interested in his father’s dealings. He wasn’t even ten years old.

“Thing is, he used to have me do deliveries sometimes. Me and my friends, who were the kids of his friends, we’d drop off the stuff for them so there wasn’t an easy trail. I didn’t know what I was doing, exactly, but I knew it wasn’t good. But I was seven, what was I going to say? So I just did it and went on with my life.” She grits her teeth, picking at a tear on her jeans. “All went fine until he chickened out.”

“Wait,” Wells says, shocked. “He didn’t—,”

She nods. “When he turned in his friends, he turned me in too. Me and my friends. Figured that would really get him off the hook. I mean, turning in his own daughter? That’s obviously proof of a man regretful, isn’t it?”

He doesn’t know what to say. He always forgets that all the delinquents, save for the truly dangerous ones, have a story like that. Tricky circumstances that got them landed in lock up. Twisted, like Monroe’s, or reckless, like Finn wasting air on a spacewalk.

“I don’t really care about the drug ring. It was a shitty thing, whatever. But I just can’t forget about how cowardly he was. He turned in his own friends, his own child, and left my mom behind to fend for herself. With no one. He was the biggest coward I’ve ever known.” She’s picked at her jeans so frequently there’s a small scrape forming on her knee, a scab that refuses to heal from how often it’s picked at through the fabric. “I’m not going to be that. I’m not going to be a coward.”

Wells lets this sink in. Turns out he’s not the only one trying to outrun their father’s shadow, even if the circumstances are vastly different.

She shrugs. “Just wanted you to know you’re not alone. Whatever you saw with those stupid nuts, I probably would’ve seen something similar.”

Tentatively, he reaches up and pats Monroe’s shoulder next to him. They lock eyes for the first time. “You’re not going to be a coward. Thanks for telling me.”

She examines him quietly for a moment before nodding, dropping her gaze back down to her jeans.

\--

Wells and Monroe make their way back to camp, relieved to see that most of their fellow delinquents have already come down from the effect of the Jobi nuts as well. From across camp, Octavia catches Well’s attention and gives him a quick nod before disappearing behind the fence.

The grounder must have escaped.

“Wells!” Clarke shouts, making Wells jump from the familiarity of the sound. She approaches and takes his arms, locking eyes with him. “Everything okay here? Did you eat the—?”

“I did,” he finishes for her, touching her elbow reassuringly. “But we’re fine. It’s all good. How did the depot turn out?”

Clarke grins and nods over her shoulder, where Bellamy is dropping a huge load of supplies, most notably blankets. Wells smiles, glad for the good news, but his temperament shifts when he sees Bellamy drop another item on top of the pile. Guns.

“Are those really—?” he trails off, letting his gaze drift back to Clarke. He pauses for a long moment, formulating his next sentence carefully. “You let Bellamy bring guns into camp?”

“We’re better off with them than without them. At least against the Grounders, we’ll have a shot.”

“You let Bellamy, the person who shot my father with a gun, bring more guns into this equation.”

She looks affronted by the tone in his voice. “Listen. I talked to Bellamy. I think we have may misjudged him. Not entirely, he shouldn’t have shot your father, but we need him. And he can help us defend ourselves. I’m going to ask Jaha for a pardon.”

Wells can’t believe his ears. Clarke, his best friend and most trusted ally, is siding with the man who literally tried to kill his father in cold blood. Motive or not, it’s unforgivable. And yet here she is, standing in front of him and believing the opposite.

He merely shrugs, internalizing the betrayal. “Fine.”

“Wells,” she sighs with exasperation, “Don’t do this.”

“Do what?” he walks around her, lifting his hands in surrender. “You know what you’re doing. I’m just camp watch, remember?”

“That’s not true. Just listen—,” she begins sternly.

He will not be talked down to by Clarke Griffin. Not on the subject of his father. “People are cold, Clarke. And now we can help them. So that’s what I’m going to do.” He gives her a final nod, turning away and grabbing some blankets, handing them out to the other delinquents.

He suddenly feels a lot colder inside than air around him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy birthday sara!!! thanks for being so dedicated to this fic <3


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